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YOUNG BOSWELL 




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YOUNG BOSWELL 

CHAPTERS ON 
JAMES BOSWELL THE BIOGRAPHER 
BASED LARGELY ON NEW MATERIAL 



By 
CHAUNCEY BREWSTER TINKER 




With Many . Illustrations 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS 
BOSTON 






.^"^ 



Copyright, 1922, by 
CHAUNCEY B. TINKER 



0)1A661266 
APR 131922 



To R. B. ADAM 

My dear Mr. Adarriy 

Since it was our common interest in Boswell that brought us 
acquainted now many years ago, you will, I am sure, permit 
me to dedicate this book to you. You have furnished me with a 
large number of the new letters which are quoted in it, and with 
nearly all the illustrations. But I value even more highly your 
unfailing interest in me and in my studies. In more senses 
than one this book is already your own. 
Faithfully yours, 

Chauncey B. Tinker. 



PREFACE 

To write the life of him who was himself the 
Great Biographer is a task which I have had no 
thought of attempting in this book. In the course 
of collecting the letters of Bo- /ell I have come 
across a good many new incidents in his career, 
which, it has seemed to me, might perhaps alter, 
or at least ameliorate, the view generally held of 
him, and which might propeny oe made the sub- 
ject of a group of connected essays. In each essay 
there is, I think, a good deal of new information, 
for the sources of which I refer the reader to my 
forthcoming edition of Boswell's correspondence. 
But though a large part of my material is new, I 
have not hesitated to draw also upon older and 
more familiar matter. The quotations from Bos- 
well's letters to Temple are from the original manu- 
script, now in the possession of Mr. James Pierpont 
Morgan, which has not been studied since 1857. I 
take this opportunity of thanking Mr. Morgan for 
permitting me to copy it. In using extracts from 
it I have retained, as elsewhere, Boswell's spelling, 
but not his punctuation. 

To my friend Dr. J. T. T. Brown of Glasgow, 
who has been a lifelong student of Boswell and 
who has taken a keen interest in my labours from 



PREFACE 

their inception, I offer my warmest thanks. Mr. 
Clement Shorter has kindly permitted me to reprint 
in Chapter ix a portion of the essay that I con- 
tributed to the ninth volume of his edition of 
BoswelFs Johnson, as an introduction to the Jour- 
nal oj a Tour to the Hebrides. 

In one way, perhaps, this book may be unique. 
James Boswell has fared rather badly at the hands 
of most people who have written about him. For 
myself, I frankly admit that I have enjoyed my 
association with him, and that I have had no desire 
either to patronise him or to sit in judgment on his 
occasional lapses from social propriety and moral 
standards. That Boswell was at times a very fool- 
ish young man any reader may see ; but he was not, 
I think, so foolish as many of his critics have been. 
When all is said, he had genius, and of that I have 
tried to make a sympathetic study, preferring to 
err, if I must err, on the side of appreciation. 

C. B. T. 

Yale Univkrbitt 

February 23, 1922. 



CONTENTS 

I. Young Boswell .... 1 

II. In Holland and Germany . 27 

III. With the French Philosophers . 49 

IV. Boswell and Wilkes ... 64 

V. Boswell and his Elders: Lord 
Auchinleck, Sir Alexander Dick, 

General Paoli .... 92 

VI. In Love 117 

VII. Wooing a Wife 138 

VIII. The Social Genius of Boswell . 165 

IX. Journal-keeping and Journal-pub- 
lishing 192 

X. The Magnum Opus . . . . 220 

XL The Master of Auchinleck . . 239 

Index 257 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

James Boswell .... . Frontispiece 

Engraving by William Daniell (1808) from a portrait by 
George Dance (1793) 

Facsimile of Title-page of "An Ode to Tragedy" 2 

Boswell's Crest 8 

Ruins of the Old Castle, Auchinleck ... 8 

Boswell's Inscription in his Copy of "The Gov- 
ernment OF THE Tongue" 16 

Signature of Boswell, .et. 18 26 

The Savage Man 60 

Caricature of Rousseau, the Apostle of Nature, with Hume 
and Voltaire 

John Wilkes 64 

"Bozzy" 110 

Engraving'by F. Holl, from a sketch by Sir Thomas Lawrence 

Facsimile of Title-page of "British Essays in 
Favour of the Brave Corsicans" . . 114 

Isabella de Zuylen, later Madame de Charriere 124 

The Biographer in Meditation .... 126 
Engraving by W. T. Green, from a sketch by George Langton 

Boswell in Corsican Attire 160 

Boswell's Inscription in a Copy of Anthony 

Horneck's "The Fire of the Altar" . . 168 

Facsimile of Letter from Boswell to Goldsmith 
on "She Stoops to Conquer" . . . 174-177 

Inscription in Boswell's Copy of Jaussin's "Me- 
moire de la Corse" 191 

Facsimile of a Page from Boswell's Note-Book, 
1776 . 196 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Johnson, the Bear, in the Conduct of Boswell 213 

Revising for the Second Edition .... 216 

The Biographers (Mrs. Piozzi, John Courtenay, 

Boswell) 224 

Edmond Malone 230 

A Cancelled Reference to Goldsmith in the 

Proof-sheets of the "Life" 233 

Proof-sheet of the "Life," first revise . . 234 

Proof-sheet of the "Life": last page of "Ad- 
vertisement," OR Preface, first revise . 235 

Boswell's Seal or Book-plate 238 

The Master of Auchinleck 240 

Engraving by E. Finden from portrai t by Sir Joshua Reynolds 

The Manor of Auchinleck 244 

Inscription in a Presentation Copy of the second 

EDITION OF the "Life" 249 

Boswell's Crest 255 



CHRONOLOGY 

1740. Born, October 29, at Edinburgh. 

1758. Earliest specimens of his correspondence with 

William Temple. 

1759. Enters class in Moral Philosophy mider Adam 

Smith at Glasgow University. 

1760. First Visit to London. 

1761. Returns to Edinburgh. 
Publishes an "Ode to Tragedy." 

1763. Second Visit to London. 

Publishes his correspondence with Andrew Ers- 
kine. 

Meets Samuel Johnson "in the back shop of Mr. 
Thomas Davies, the bookseller, in Russell 
Street, Covent Garden," May 16. 

Studies law at Utrecht. 

1764. At Berlin. 
Visits Geneva. 

Meets Rousseau at Motiers. 
Meets Voltaire at Ferney. 

1765. Meets Wilkes in Italy. 

In Corsica. Intimacy with General Paoli. 

1766. Returns to London ; and then to Scotland. 
Admitted to the bar in Edinburgh, July 26. 

1768. Publishes "An Account of Corsica, with Mem- 
oirs of General Paoli." 
Visits London. 



CHRONOLOGY 

1769. Publishes "British Essays in favour of the Brave 
Corsicans," by several hands. 
Marries his cousin, Margaret Montgomery of 
Lainshaw. 

1773. Elected to Literary Club, April 30. 

Visits the Hebrides with Dr. Johnson, August 
18-November 22. 

1782. Succeeds to his father's estate. 

1784. Death of Samuel Johnson. 

1785. Publishes "A Journal of the Tour to the 

Hebrides." 

1785. Takes up his residence in London. 

1786. Called to the English bar. 

1790. Defeated for Parliament. 

1791. Publishes the "Life of Johnson," May 16. 

1793. Publishes the second edition of the "Life of 
Johnson." 

1795. Dies, May 19. 



YOUNG BOSWELL 



YOUNG BOSWELL 

CHAPTER I 
YOUNG BOSWELL 

You will laugh at my whim and be sorry for my weakness. 
— BoswELL to Temple, 12 July, 1763. 

One of the rarest books in the world is a thin 
volume in quarto, called "An Ode to Tragedy," 
and described on the title-page as the work of "a 
Gentleman of Scotland." It is one of the earliest 
of James Boswell's fugitive works, and appeared 
at Edinburgh as a sixpenny pamphlet in the year 
1761, although, by an odd error in proof-reading, 
the date on the title-page is 1661. The author, 
who was but twenty years of age, was certainly 
no poet. He aspired, he announced, to soar on 
pinions bold, "and, like the skylark, at heaven's 
gate to sing"; but his mechanical verses proved 
to be as dull as a music-box. There is, to be sure, 
a description of Garrick in the role of King Lear, 
which one reads with a sort of interest because of 
the intimacy which was later to exist between 
Boswell and the actor ; and there are references to 
Mason and the elder Sheridan which are worth a 



A N 



ODE 



T O 



TRAGEDY. 



By a Gentleman of Scotland* 



/ 



EDINBURGH: 

Printed by A. Donaldson and J. R £ i D. 

For Alex. Donaldson. 

MDCLXI. 

[Price Six Pence.] 



YOUNG BOSWELL 3 

glance ; but it is not in such allusions that the value 
of the book consists. The remarkable thing about 
it is its Dedication. It is inscribed to James Bos- 
well, Esq. The author, with a humour worthy of a 
more famous publication, has genially dedicated 
the book to himself. 

But, one asks, was the reader supposed to dis- 
cover the jest ? Boswell, I fancy, did not greatly 
care, one way or the other. He had given the 
reader a hint that he was up to mischief, for he 
wrote in the dedicatory letter : "I make no doubt. 
Sir, but you consider me as your very good friend ; 
although some people — and those, too, not desti- 
tute of wisdom — will not scruple to insinuate 
the contrary." If the reader were sharp-witted 
enough to detect the imposture, he would cer- 
tainly spread the news of his discovery, and with 
it the fame of the young author. But if he missed 
the point, Boswell would be no loser, for he would 
then be regarded as the poet's patron. In either 
case, it might be hoped, people would talk about 
James Boswell. Perhaps, on the whole, he pre- 
ferred the reputation of patron to that of poet, for 
he was ever ambitious to be deemed a Maecenas 
— a sufficiently rare ambition in a youth of twenty 
summers. Indeed, he had already appeared in this 
role. His friend, Francis Gentleman, an actor of 
Glasgow, had published an edition of the well-known 



4 YOUNG BOSWELL 

tragedy of "Oroonoco" in the previous year, and 
had dedicated it to Boswell; the young man has 
been suspected, not without reason, of having writ- 
ten the dedicatory verses himself. Moreover, when, 
a few years later, his friend Derrick (Beau Nash*s 
successor as Master of Ceremonies at Bath) pub- 
lished a series of letters descriptive of Ireland and 
of the English Lakes, Boswell persuaded him to 
address one of them to "James Boswell, Esq., of 
Authenleck [so Derrick misprinted the name], 
North-Britain." It is clear that Boswell's ambition 
was peculiar. He desired to be known as the asso- 
ciate of authors. The glory, to his way of thinking, 
is to move in the world of literary men, to know 
what is going on, and in time, perhaps, to become 
an influence in the lives of these great ones. It was 
his ambition to shine, but he preferred to shine in 
a reflected light. Many years after, a relative re- 
marked, " He preferred being a showman to keep- 
ing a shop of his own." 

This ruling passion of Boswell's — the passion 
not to occupy the throne, or even to be the power 
behind it, but to stand near the throne as the 
monarch's acknowledged friend — is a suflSciently 
unusual phenomenon, and harshly has it been 
judged. It would be interesting to speculate why 
Boswell's desire to associate with men of genius 
should have moved the critics to violent indig- 



YOUNG BOSWELL 5 

nation. It is surely a little odd that a man who 
has provided the world with two of the most 
delightful, profitable, and amusing books of all 
time should have been denounced as a toad-eater 
and a lick-spittle. One would think that the 
means by which he developed his innate genius 
might have been studied with seriousness, if not 
with sympathy, and that what most critics have 
been content to call an appetite for notoriety 
might have been discovered by the discriminating 
to be, in truth, a commendable ambition. But the 
fact is that few critics have been fitted to under- 
stand, much less to interpret, Boswell's curious 
sense of humour. He was a man who not only 
enjoyed a joke, but enjoyed it the more when it 
was directed at himself. He was not unwilling to 
be the butt, provided only that there might be wit 
and hilarity. In the year following the appearance 
of his *'Ode to Tragedy," he published another 
poem, celebrating his social exploits in London, 
entitled *'The Cub at Newmarket," and dedicated 
to the Duke of York. " Permit me to let the world 
know," he remarked in the Dedication, "that the 
same cub has been laughed at by the Duke of 
York." Boswell was, and ever remained, willing to 
sacrifice himself that the company might laugh. 

And now, O reader, if all this disgusts or pains 
you, pray close the book and read in it no more. 



6 YOUNG BOSWELL 

for the story of James Boswell is not for you. 
There are serious and admirable books for those 
who wish to associate with an author who is con- 
sistently modest and dignified, and who, if he 
indulges in humour, never forgets to maintain a 
certain propriety, lest the reader call him a fool. 
But the story of James Boswell is for those who 
are ready and able to realise that greatness may be 
linked with folly or, indeed, spring out of it. 

If, then, association with the Great on terms of 
easy intimacy was the ambition of his youth, it 
was no more than he had a right to feel that he 
might achieve. He was no social upstart. Noth- 
ing could be further from the truth than to con- 
ceive of him as coming out of some vague middle 
class, with a cheap desire to raise himself by 
catching at the skirts of the eminent. If it were 
permissible to employ the standards of fine society, 
it would not be unfair to say that in the association 
with Johnson it was Boswell who conferred upon 
the older man the social distinction. A descendant 
of Robert the Bruce, with the blood of half a 
dozen earls flowing in his veins, might, it is to be 
hoped, be pardoned for aspiring to associate with 
the son of a country bookseller ! There was, of 
course, a difference in age, nationality, and achieve- 
ment that must be reckoned with; but, allowing 
for all this, there was no reason why young Boswell 



YOUNG BOSWELL 7 

should hesitate to claim his right to enter the most 
distinguished society of the realm. 

His father, Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck, 
was one of the most prominent members of the 
landed gentry of Southern Scotland, and an advo- 
cate of high distinction. Upon his elevation to 
the judicial bench, he had assumed, according to 
Scottish custom, the title of Lord Auchinleck.^ 
His estate at Auchinleck, in Ayrshire, had been 
conferred upon his ancestor, Thomas Boswell, by 
royal grant in 1504. This founder of a long line 
had been killed in battle at Flodden Field, together 
with the sovereign who had been his benefactor. 
Nor was Boswell's descent less distinguished on 
his mother's side. She was Euphemia Erskine, 
through whom he might claim kinship with the 
Earls of Mar and Dundonald. Finally, as he 
proudly relates, from his great grandfather, Alex- 
ander, Earl of Kincardine, the blood of Bruce 
flowed in his veins. 

The estate of the family had been judiciously 

increased until, in the days of Boswell, the laird 

of Auchinleck could ride ten miles forward from 

the door of his house without leaving his own 

land; upon this vast tract were no less than six 

1 This title, however, like episcopal titles in England, could 
not be inherited ; neither did it confer upon the holder's wife 
the privileges of a peeress. Thus Lord Auchinleck's wife 
remained "Mrs. Boswell." 



8 



YOUNG BOSWELL 




hundred people, attached to him as overlord. 
Here Boswell's father had erected a palace declared 
(upon somewhat doubtful local testimony) to be 
the work of the Adam brothers, and a worthy centre 
to the family seat which it dominated. Above 
the Romanesque portal, in an elaborately carved 
tympanum, is the Boswellian crest — a hooded fal- 
con proper — and other 
(^ allegorical symbols. 

Through the grounds 
flow the river Lugar 
and a stream called the 
Dipple, which empties 
into it. There are deep 
chasms, steep descents to the water, and romantic 
cliffs. On the banks of the Lugar are the ruins 
of the original castle, and between these and 
the house, the remains of a former mansion. 
Boswell told Johnson that in youth he had 
"appropriated the finest descriptions in the an- 
cient classics" to certain scenes on his ancestral 
estates. Years later, when Johnson visited the 
place, after the tour to the Hebrides, he 
wrote: "Lord Auchinleck has built a house of 
hewn stone, very stately and durable, and has 
advanced the value of his lands, with great ten- 
derness to his tenants. I was, however, less de- 
lighted with the elegance of the modern mansion, 




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YOUNG BOSWELL 9 

than with the sullen dignity of the old castle." It 
was of this castle that he had said, when Boswell 
first described it to him, "I must be there. Sir, 
and we will live in the old castle ; and if there is 
not a room in it remaining, we will build one." 

And yet all this was not enough to satisfy the 
young fellow who was heir apparent to it all. It 
was inconveniently distant from cities and the 
haunts of men. His father had, to be sure, a 
house in Edinburgh. In Edinburgh James had 
been born ; there he had gone to school ; there for 
a time he had attended the university./ But he 
longed for the true centre of culture and of social 
life, and that, he knew, was London. His father 
knew everybody in Scotland. There was no one 
there whom he, too, might not know. But the 
air of provinciality galled him, even in Edinburgh, 
In Auchinleck it was intolerable. 

Over the main portal of the house at Auchin- 
leck Boswell's father had had carved a quotation 
from the Epistles of Horace, in the choice of 
which, it might almost seem, he had his restless 
son in mind : — 

Quod petis hie est, 
Est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit aequus. 

Ulubrae, a town near the Pontine marshes of 
Latium, had been a byword among the Latin 
authors for its remoteness from Rome, and Boswell 



10 YOUNG BOSWELL 

never scrupled to admit that he had not the 
animus oequus necessary to the enjoyment of a 
modern Scottish Ulubrae. Even after it was his 
own, he referred sarcastically to himself, when 
writing to John Wilkes, as the "Master of Ulu- 
brae," and he remained consistently unwilling to 
exile himself there. Absent from London, he was 
ever restless. At the age of twenty, after his first 
visit to London, he spoke with transport of the 
town where his thoughts of happiness had "always 
centred," where he had got his mind filled with 
the most "gay ideas — getting into the Guards, 
being about Court, enjoying the happiness of the 
heau monde^ and the company of men of genius." 
And at the age of fifty-four, when his days were 
numbered, he wrote to his brother David from 
Auchinleck : — 

I am pleased to see that the meeting of Parliament is 
prorogued to the twenty-fifth of November, as I shall 
have three weeks more without that additional impa- 
tience which the knowledge of the town being full, and 
important affairs agitated, and the Literary Club, &c., 
going on, cannot but produce. Perhaps I may weather 
it out here till January. . . . How hard it is that I do 
not enjoy this fine place. 

But Boswell's desire for the society of the Great 
was of a peculiar kind. To the titled aristocracy 
and to the merely wealthy he was, on the whole, 



YOUNG BOSWELL 11 

indifferent, unless they had something other to 
offer than rank or riches. At one time in his life, 
for example, he was privileged to meet and con- 
verse with King George III ; but the honour seems 
to have made slight impression on him, compared 
with his association with men of genius; for he 
makes but the vaguest reference to it in his works. 
It was literary genius that he desired to find. 

Boswell first comes before us at the age of 
seventeen years and nine months; his biography 
before that is a mere skeleton of dates and anec- 
dotes. On July 29, 1758, he wrote to his lifelong 
friend, William Temple, the first of his letters 
which has come down to us. There is much in it 
about the reading of history and of poetry; but 
the most significant passage, in the light of what 
Boswell was destined to become, is an account of 
his first meeting with David Hume. Temple had, 
in some way or other, been able to procure Boswell 
an introduction to him, and the account of the 
conversation is a clear indication of what Boswell 
sought in such intercourse. Hume, who was al- 
most thirty years older than Boswell, had by now 
attained the age of forty-seven, and was engaged 
in completing his "History of England." In the 
previous year he had written his essay on the 
"Natural History of Religion," which had served 
to spread his popular reputation as an atheist. 



12 YOUNG BOSWELL 

Some days ago [writes Bos well], I was introduced to 
your friend Mr. Hume; he is a most discreet, affable 
man as ever I met with, and has realy a great deal of 
learning, and a choice collection of books. He is indeed 
an extraordinary man, few such people are to be met 
with nowadays. We talk a great deal of genius, fine 
language, improving our style, etc., but, I am afraid, 
soUid learning is much wore out. Mr. Hume, I think, 
is a very proper person for a young man to cultivate an 
acquaintance with; though he has not, perhaps, the 
most delicate taste, yet he has apply 'd himself with 
great attention to the study of the ancients, and is 
Hkeways a great historian, so that you are not only 
entertained in his company, but may reap a great deal 
of usefuU instruction. I own myself much obliged to 
you, dear Sir, for procuring me the pleasure of his 
acquaintance. 

This, I submit, is rather remarkable from a youth 
of seventeen, writing to his chimi ! For Boswell, 
an ideal association with an older man implies 
"soUid learning," delicate taste, useful instruction, 
and an entertaining style. Any modern parent 
or teacher would be inclined to rest content with 
thus much ambition in a boy of seventeen, if, 
indeed, he could rid his mind of the fear that it 
was all a hoax. James sits in judgment upon the 
qualifications of David Hume, the philosopher, 
as calmly — and, perhaps, as discriminatingly— as 
his father pronounced judgment upon a poacher 
at the assizes. The boy detected a lack in Hume, 



YOUNG BOSWELL IS 

and it is the very one which the philosophers 
and bluestockings of the Parisian salons felt in 
him when he visited them five years later. Hume 
had not delicacy of taste. What he lacked was ur- 
banity. Madame du Deffand described him as a 
gros drole, and Madame Geoffrin called him a peas- 
ant. Learning, according to our youthful critic, 
though it should be "soUid" need not be leaden.^ 

All this interest in wit and instructive conver- 
sation might easily, it would seem, have made 
young James into a prig. He was in a fair way to 
become that most dreadful of young things, a boy 
of large inexperience who fancies himself a phil- 
osopher and a man of the world. But he was in 
no danger of this. His love of convivial pleasure, 
which later plunged him into gulfs of misery, 
saved him at least from this. He had as much 
difficulty as any schoolboy ever had in sticking to 
his studies ; just as, later on, he found it impos- 

* Years did not change the original impression which 
Boswell formed of the conversation of David Hume. He 
heard him talk often, but seldom found anything very pointed 
or profound to record. Nearly thirty years later, he wrote : 
" He was cheerful, obliging and instructive ; he was charitable 
to the poor ; and many an agreeable hour have I passed with 
him. I have preserved some entertaining and interesting 
memoirs of him, particularly when he knew himself to be 
dying, which I may, some time or other, communicate to the 
world." But it is significant that there was never suflScient 
interest to spur him to the fulfillment of his promise. 



14 YOUNG BOSWELL 

sible to stick to any course of reading that he might 
lay out for himself. His mind was eager and 
curious, rather than progressive. He resided, for 
brief periods, at Edinburgh University and at 
Glasgow University, but in both places his social 
instincts defeated anything like an orderly educa- 
tion. He had, it is true, more learning, liberal 
and professional, than his critics and biographers 
have been willing to allow him ; but his passion 
for companionship kept him always on the rove. 
At one time he attached himself to Sir David 
Dalrymple; at another time, to a company of 
actors. He knew no rest until he found his rest in 
Johnson. 

And who shall say that he was wrong.? After 
all possible perfection of systems and courses of 
study and methods of instruction, liberal educa- 
tion remains a personal relationship. Who would 
not barter the methods of all the schools for a con- 
versation with Socrates ? Boswell's relations with 
Johnson, in which he found, not merely wit and 
instruction, but stimulus to achievement and the 
awakening of powers within himself which he had 
never realised, are a vindication of that instinct 
within him which drove him to seek out the 
society of men of letters. To assert that Boswell 
found in such society the fulfillment of the intel- 
lectual life of which he had dreamed is not to say 



YOUNG BOSWELL 15 

that every bluestocking and moonstruck young 
philosoplier can do the same. The distinctive 
feature in Boswell is the capacity for reahsing and 
using the richness of the life to which he was ad- 
mitted. For this, as we shall see later, he was 
specially qualified. 

Another force which tended to keep him from 
priggishness was a naivete the equal of which it 
would be difficult to discover. Pepys's was no lar- 
ger, though it was more natural ; Rousseau's was 
no larger, though it was less comic. Perhaps no 
better illustration of it can be given than the in- 
scription which he himself wrote in a copy of a 
book called "The Government of the Tongue," — 
"Presented to me by my worthy freind, Bennet 
Langton, Esq : of Langton, as a Book by which I 
might be much improved, viz. by the Government 
of the Tongue. Pie gave me the Book and hoped I 
would read that treatise ; but said no more. I have 
expressed in words what I beleive was his meaning. 
It was a delicate admonition." A naive person, I 
suppose, is one who, being profoundly interested 
in his own personality, makes the unwarranted 
assumption that other people are similarly inter- 
ested in it. A few sentences from an early letter 
to Sir David Dalrymple, regarding the approaching 
sojourn in Utrecht, are, it seems to me, a classical 
example of naivete : — 










f'0^7^4^^^ 




'py^A. 



i.C^ P'Ty^. 



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BosweWs Inscription in his copy of The Government 
qf the Tongue " 



YOUNG BOSWELL 17 

My great object is to attain a proper conduct in life. 
How sad will it be, if I turn no better than I am. I 
have much vivacity, which leads me to dissipation and 
folly. This, I think, I can restrain. But I will be 
moderate, and not aim at a stiff sageness and buckram 
correctness. I must, however, own to you that I have 
at bottom a melancholy cast ; which dissipation re- 
lieves by making me thoughtless, and therefore, an 
easier, though a more contemptible animal. I dread 
a return of this malady. I am always apprehensive 
of it. Pray tell me if Utrecht be a place of a dull and 
severe cast, or if it be a place of decency and chearf uU 
politeness ? Tell me, too, if years do not strengthen the 
mind, and make it less susceptible of being hurt ? and 
if having a rational object will not keep up my spirits ? 

There are those who find in such an utterly 
frank revelation of what is going on in a human 
breast something quite captivating. They learn 
to laugh at it without sneering at it. So, we may 
imagine, did Sir David. When Madame du Def- 
fand read the "Tour to Corsica," she declared 
herseK (to Horace Walpole, of all people), "ex- 
tremement contente'' ; and elsewhere, "J'aime I'au- 
teur a la folic ; son coeur est excellent, son ame est 
pleine de vertus ; je vais etre en garde a ne pas 
laisser voir I'engouement que j'ai de son ouvrage." 
The blind sibyl of the Parisian salons, who had 
spent her life with sophistication, knew well the 
value of naivete — and the wisdom of concealing it. 



18 YOUNG BOSWELL 

Of the melancholy which Boswell describes to 
Sir David, and which he links with his dissipation, 
something must be said, if only for the reason that 
Boswell himself said so much of it. He perpet- 
ually insisted that he was, at bottom, a melancholy 
man. The fear of it was ever present in his mind ; 
it darkened his youth, and it shrouded his latter 
days in misery. He described its symptoms to all 
his friends, and made pathetic appeals to them to 
help him get the better of it. All this, not unnat- 
urally, bored his friends exceedingly, for friends 
do not care to hear of your blues and your fore- 
bodings. It may be the duty of friends to help 
you bear your burden, but if you wish to retain 
them, it is best to bear it yourself without help. 
Perhaps Boswell's friends would have been more 
indulgent if the victim's melancholy had not taken 
flight immediately upon their arrival, whereupon 
they kindly assumed that his woes were imaginary. 
Perhaps they were. But what misery is more 
dreadful than that which resides in the imagina- 
tion alone ? Are not the insane so afflicted ? 

Again, it is true that Boswell's melancholy was 
of that strikingly familiar kind which descends 
upon us just as we approach some period of pro- 
tracted work. His spirits always revived at the 
prospect of a holiday. In a word, our Boswell was 
lazy. But this is not an end of the matter. If 



YOUNG BOSWELL 19 

your friend is sick, it may be that there is a remedy 
that will restore him to health ; but so long as he 
does not use it, he will remain sick. It may well 
be that Boswell's melancholy was of a sort which 
afflicts the majority of men, and which the majority 
of men get rid of by a little dogged pluck ; but the 
fact remains that Boswell did not get rid of his, 
except at moments, and we shall understand him 
the better if we do not belittle his suffering. Imag- 
inary or not, it was there, and there it remained. 
He talked about it too much, and for that his 
friends have found it hard to forgive him. 

The letter that follows was addressed to one of 
his dearest friends, but one of whom the readers 
of his biography know little — John Johnston of 
Grange. He was, as the following letter makes 
evident, a boyhood friend, who had become a 
solicitor and who had taken charge of Boswell's 
private affairs during his absence from Scotland. 
There was nothing literary about the friendship 
between the two, and therefore Boswell never had 
occasion to mention Johnston, as he did almost 
all his other friends, when he published the "Life 
of Johnson." But Johnston was apparently a 
quiet and affectionate person, and is mentioned 
in the letters several times as "worthy Grange." 
This is the only letter of Boswell's to him which 
is known to exist. 



20 YOUNG BOSWELL 

London, 30 June^ 1763. 
My deae Friend, — 

I have been dissapointed in not hearing from you a 
second time before now, and as I intended to answer 
that expected letter, I have delayed writing for a post 
or two. 

I hope you approve of my plan of going abroad. I 
never could be able to make anything of my army 
schemes. My father's rooted aversion would have 
allways prevented me from rising in that way. By 
falling in with his schemes, I make him easy and happy, 
and I have a better prospect of doing well in the world, 
as I will have no up-hill work, but all will go smooth. 
I have had a letter from my father in which he ex- 
presses much affection, and declares that he has not 
had so much satisfaction these four years. I wish 
from my heart that I may be able to make myself a 
Man, and to become steady and sensible in my conduct. 
But, alas, this miserable melancholy is allways weigh- 
ing me down, and rendering me indifferent to all 
pursuits. For these two days past, I have been very 
bad (owing to thick, rainy weather) and have been 
viewing all things in the most dissagreeable light. I 
have now got relief and am pretty easy and chearfull. 
I sympath[ise] very heartily with your distress. It is 
indeed a most severe affliction. You are right in think- 
ing that we cannot drive it away. I advise you to 
study it carefully. Observe its effects, and find out 
by what methods to render yourself tollerably easy 
while it lasts. What I want to do is to bring myself 
to that aequality of behaviour that, whether my 
spirits are high or low, people may see little odds upon 



YOUNG BOSWELL 21 

me. I am perswaded that when I can restrain my 
flightiness and keep an even external tenour, that my 
mind will attain a settled serenity. My dear friend ! 
do all you can to keep free of it. Mix business and 
amusement, so that your mind may be allways em- 
ployed and no time left for the gloomy broodings of a 
distempered fancy. 

My father inclines that I should pass next winter at 
Utrecht and afterwards proceed to the south of Europe. 
At Utrecht I am told that I shall have a most beautifull 
city to Hve in; very genteel people to be acquainted 
with ; an opportunity of learning the French language, 
and easy opportunity of jaunting about to the Hague, 
Roterdam, and, in short, up and down all the seven 
Provinces. I am also to hear the lectures on civil law, 
and put myself on the plan of acquiring a habit of study 
and application. Too much of that would be bad for 
me. But idleness is still worse. And now, my friend, 
don't you think that I am upon a better plan than 
forcing myself into the Guards, in time of peace, where 
I should be continaly fighting — not against the 
French — but against my father's inclination ? Don't 
you think, too, that I am now upon a more independent 
and extensive plan, and that a Man with such a mind 
as I have should rather embrace soft measures ? My 
dear Johnston ! you may figure the many spirited, gay 
ideas which I entertain when I consider that I am now 
a young man of fortune, just going to set out on his 
travels. That time which I have often at a distance 
looked forward to is arrived. My father wants to have 
me go as soon as possible. So that I shall set out in a 
fortnight or less. 



22 YOUNG BOSWELL 

As to my affairs. Love has payed me £10, and still 
owes me £30, which I believe I must allow to lie over a 
little. My boy's maintenance, I imagine, will come to 
£10 a year. I have a notion to make out three bills, 
each of that sum, which I will cause Love sign, payable 
at different future terms, and these I will indorse to 
you ; so that you can be supplied from time to time. I 
am anxious to hear of Charles. Meet with Cairnie and 
get his accounts of him. I shall send you some journal 
next Tuesday. You shall hear every post from me now 
till I leave Britain. I ever am 

Your sincere friend, 
James Boswell. 

If letters went astray, as they do in the old 
comedies, and this one had been delivered into the 
hands of the Laird of Auchinleck, instead of to 
John Johnston of Grange, what a rumpus there 
would have been ! From the first word to the 
last, this letter, despite its easy chatter, is strictly 
secret intelligence, by no means intended for the 
eye or ear of parents. "Jaunting about to the 
Hague and Roterdam," indeed! "Up and down 
all the Seven Provinces," quotha ! James Boswell 
was being sent to Holland to read the law, and he 
knew it. Nothing had been said, we must believe, 
about those "very genteel people" he hoped to 
meet, and no promise had been extracted from the 
father by which one might be justified in asserting 
that it was planned that he should afterwards 



YOUNG BOSWELL 23 

"proceed" to the south of Europe. To the Laird 
of Auchinleck it is all strictly practical. James is 
being sent to Utrecht to acquire a professional 
education ; he is not being sent off on the Grand 
Tour. He had wasted his time and opportunities 
when he had been put to the work in Scotland, 
and now some other plan must be tried. But as 
for holiday junketings . . . 

And now note the skill with which youth goes 
at the management of parents. Nothing had come 
of Boswell's proposal to get a commission in the 
Guards. Part of the attractiveness of the propo- 
sal, anyhow, was that the road to a commission 
led immediately to London. And then his father 
had grumbled and protested from the beginning. 
Dreams of martial glory must be laid aside. But 
not without getting something for them. The 
plan is to sell them to the father for the Grand 
Tour through Europe, "proceeding" as far as 
Rome, or — who knows ? — Corsica. Seem to fall 
in with your father's plans. The first thing to do is 
to regain the parental favour. The first step to- 
ward the Grand Tour is to get a foothold on the 
Continent. It is unfortunate that it must be 
Utrecht, but perhaps something can be made of 
Utrecht. At any rate, there will be the opportu- 
nity of learning — the French language. There are 
the Seven Provinces to go jaunting about in, and, 



24 YOUNG BOSWELL 

in the distance, after a year, Italy and Rome. "I 
am also to hear lectures on civil law." — O Jemmy 
Boswell, Jemmy Boswell, O ! 

But before one makes off to Europe, to be gone, 
perhaps, three years, one settles one's private 
affairs ; and hence this letter to the young solicitor- 
friend. Love has not yet paid up. Love was 
one of Boswell's actor-friends and former heroes, 
who is remembered as the man who first urged 
him to keep a journal. If Love should pay the 
thirty pounds which he still owes, the money may 
be applied to another object. 

"My boy's maintenance, I imagine, will come 
to £10 a year." In the good old days of Samuel 
Pepys, the care of an illegitimate child "for ever" 
cost a man £5. Moll Flanders, it may be recalled, 
got rid of her child by an initial expense of £10. 
And now, in the year of our Lord 1763, the charge 
has risen to £10 annually. Or was it that Boswell, 
who, as we shall see later, had as much fatherly 
pride in his offspring as Robert Burns, had pro- 
vided for his youngster some superior "accommo- 
dations" ? Charles is, very probably, the name of 
this "boy," Cairnie, not impossibly, that of his 
caretaker. I cannot tell. It is now probably too 
late to identify them. At any rate, I have not suc- 
ceeded in doing so. 

"My boy's maintenance." Poor little boy! 



YOUNG BOSWELL 25 

Poor little waif flung out at random, on the great 
sea of life, with ten pounds a year for maintenance ! 
What your life was, lost among the peasants of 
southern Scotland, who shall guess? Your lot 
is less distinguished than that of Wordsworth's 
French daughter, for no books can be written about 
you. But your mere existence tells us something 
about yoiu* father that we did not know before. 
His melancoly had, it is clear, a very real foun- 
dation, which has hitherto been overlooked. His 
pious relatives would have called it sin and the 
wages of sin. The young fellow, who had reached 
the age of twenty-two, must indeed have felt that, 
in enjoying the pleasures of this world, he had 
moved at a rather rapid pace, and that the conse- 
quences of that pace were becoming a burden. 
Hence the promises of reform, and the determina- 
tion to become "steady and sensible" in his 
conduct. 

And so, having settled his affairs as best might 
be, under circumstances not wholly satisfactory, 
and having brought his father to a state of mind 
more or less hopeful, in which he might be amen- 
able to later proposals for James's junketing about 
the Seven Provinces, Germany, Switzerland, and 
Italy, young Boswell prepared himself to depart. 
A varied experience awaited him on the Continent, 
and an enrichment of that genius which nature 



26 



YOUNG BOSWELL 



had bestowed upon him. He carried his luck 
with him, and in the game which ensued between 
him and his father, — a game which was played 
with the Grand Tour for a stake, — fortune con- 
sistently smiled upon the son. 



Ua,^^^KJ-b>e^,/yS?( 



CHAPTER II 

IN HOLLAND AND GERMANY 

James Boswell's attainments in the law have 
been subjected to the same sUghting criticism as 
everything else connected with his personal life. 
It does not do to be too frank with regard to your- 
self, or you will find that the world is accepting 
your own estimate, or accepting it at a discount. 
In his Commonplace Book Boswell wrote : — 

Boswell had a great aversion to the law, but forced 
himself to enter upon that laborious profession in com- 
pliance with the anxious desire of his father, for whom 
he had the greatest regard. After putting on the gown, 
he said with great good humour to his brother advo- 
cates, "Gentlemen, I am prest into the service here; 
but I have observed that a prest man, either by sea or 
land, after a Kttle time does just as well as a volunteer. 

Boswell never liked his profession, but he contrived 
(until he left Scotland) to get along in it. In 
youth, he never liked the reading of the law, but 
he contrived to do it. Indeed, we may say that 
he was compelled to do it. If definite proof be 
demanded, that proof can be supplied. Boswell's 
fee-book is preserved in the Advocates' Library 
at Edinburgh, and an examination of it will con- 



28 YOUNG BOSWELL 

vince any one that he was a busy and successful 
young lawyer. 

The assumption that Boswell wasted all his time 
in those youthful days when he was set at the 
reading of law is incorrect. It is caused in part 
by a passage in one of his very earliest letters, 
written, at the age of eighteen, to Temple, from 
Edinburgh, which for many years has circulated 
in the following form : — 

I can assure you the study of the law here is a most 
laborious task. In return for yours, I shall give you 
an account of my studies. From nine to ten I attend 
the law-class ; from ten to eleven study at home ; and 
from one to two attend a college upon Roman Antiqui- 
ties; the afternoon and evening I likeways spend in 
study. 

It would seem as if a morning in which one hour 
was given to attending a class in law and one to 
studying it was no very arduous way of beginning 
the day. But, as a matter of fact, the first editor 
of the letters has carelessly dropped out a trifle 
of two hours. The manuscript reads: — 

From 9 to 10, 1 attend the law class; from 10 to 11, 
the Astronomy ; from 11 to 1, study at home ; from 1 to 
2, attend a college upon Roman Antiquities, etc. 

Clearly, if there is any truth in this account, Bos- 
well could not easily have failed to shuffle on some 
knowledge. 



IN HOLLAND AND GERMANY 29 

Dr. J. T. T. Brown, of Glasgow, who owns Bos- 
well's annotated copy of Erskine's "Institutes," 
■ — itself an evidence of no slight industry, — has 
expressed himself in clear terms respecting Bos- 
well's knowledge of the law. He is a man of pro- 
found familiarity with that unique subject, Scots 
law, and a Boswellian scholar of the first rank, and 
we can do no better than listen to his summary. 

It is a mistake to suppose, as most critics do, that 
Boswell wholly dissipated the four years spent at 
Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities, and went to 
Utrecht ill prepared to benefit from tuition there. The 
opposite is true. As a student both in Edinburgh and 
Glasgow his name no doubt is associated with more 
than one wild frolic and with some self-indulgence too ; 
but the fact that he passed his trials as a Civilian for 
admission to the Faculty of Advocates, a year before 
he left home, is enough of itself to prove the quality of 
his attainments. By far the greater number of aspiring 
advocates obtained admission by what was then called 
the Municipal Law examination ; only a few chose the 
much higher pass in Civil Law. Lord Auchinleck, 
besides, had specially tutored his son in Roman Law 
and encouraged his studies in Greek so that he might 
when in Holland benefit by Trotz's prelections on the 
Theodosian Code. 

There were several reasons for the choice of 
Utrecht as the place where Boswell should continue 
his legal studies. In the first place, the Dutch 



30 YOUNG BOSWELL 

jurisconsults were among the most learned and 
influential in all Europe, so that it was a common 
thing for young Scottish students of the law to 
conclude their training in Holland. Boswell's 
father had himself been a student at Leyden. 
Moreover, Sir David Dalrymple, having been at 
Utrecht eighteen years before, was able to give 
Boswell much valuable advice respecting the work 
there. It was, indeed. Sir David who first suggested 
the university as the desirable place for the comple- 
tion of Boswell's training. The young man him- 
self would have preferred a French academy, but 
Sir David did not approve. Lord Auchinleck gave 
an easy assent to the proposals of his brother advo- 
cate, which he would almost certainly have denied 
to any plan originating with his son. Again, the 
Boswells had relatives in Holland. Boswell's great 
grandmother, the Countess of Kincardine, was of 
Dutch birth, and a member of the "noble house of 
Sommelsdyck." "The family," writes Boswell in 
the "Tour to the Hebrides," "has still great dig- 
nity and opulence, and by intermarriages is con- 
nected with many other noble families." His 
father gave Boswell a letter of introduction to 
Gronovius, a scholar with whom he had been inti- 
mate many years before, while Sir David com- 
mended him to the care of the Count of Nassau, at 
Utrecht, a distinguished publicist and man of letters. 



IN HOLLAND AND GERMANY 31 

We know more of Boswell's plans with respect 
to Utrecht than of his attainments there. A fort- 
night before his departure from England, he gave 
Sir David the following description of his plans : — 

I am determined to study the civil law and the law of 
nature and nations. I shall also have Erskine's "In- 
stitutes" with me, and by degrees acquire the Scots 
law. I shall follow a plan which you once suggested to 
me, of making a copy of the whole book, which will fix 
my attention to the subject, and help to imprint it on 
my memory. The acquiring French is a matter of 
great moment, and I am determined to be very assidu- 
ous in doing so. I shall look about here for a good 
French servant of undoubted character, and, at any 
rate, shall have such a one at Utrecht. I shall dine at 
the old "Castle of Antwerp." I am told by the same 
gentleman who told me many other things, that the 
new one is the best; but, as he likewise told me that 
they generally spoke English, and as I have now no 
great respect for his accounts, I shall be with your old 
friend or his successor. 

On August 5, 1763, therefore, at five o'clock in 
the morning, Boswell left London en route for Har- 
wich and Holland. He was accompanied by 
Samuel Johnson, who was fain to show his affec- 
tion for his young friend by accompanying him as 
far as Harwich and the packet-boat. As readers 
of the "Life of Johnson" will recall, they made a 
pleasant jaunt of it, and broke the journey at Col- 



32 YOUNG BOSWELL 

Chester, arriving at Harwich next day. Boswell 
was a Httle nervous at the thought of the new life 
that awaited him, and downcast at leaving the 
joys of London. He tells us that he "teized" his 
companion "with fanciful apprehensions of un- 
happiness"; and it was on this occasion that 
Johnson, pointing to a moth that had burnt its 
life out in a candle-flame, remarked, "That crea- 
ture was its own tormentor, and I believe its name 
was Boswell." 

Johnson walked down to the beach with the 
boy, and saw him safe on the packet-boat to Hel- 
voetsluys. "As the vessel put out to sea," remarks 
Boswell, "I kept my eyes upon him for a consider- 
able time, while he remained rolling his majestic 
frame in the usual manner ; and at last I perceived 
him walk back into the town, and he disappeared." 

Upon his arrival in Utrecht, Boswell put up at 
the Cour de I'Empereur; but we know nothing 
more of his early days there than that he found 
the town very dull, and fell into a fit of blues. But 
before the year was out, social intercourse had 
restored his natural gaiety. Before December 
he was sufficiently intimate with his new teacher, 
whom he calls "mynheer Trotz," to enlist his 
assistance for Dr. Johnson in the study of the 
Frisian language. Moreover, he recorded in his 
Commonplace Book an anecdote narrated by 



IN HOLLAND AND GERMANY 33 

Trotz, which seems to show that the old gentleman 
was not without some sense of humour. 

When Mr. Trotz, Professor of Civil Law at Utrecht, 
was at Copenhagen, he had a mind to hear the Danish 
pulpit oratory, and went into one of their churches. 
At that time the barbarous custom of making spoil of 
shipwrecked goods still prevailed in Denmark. The 
minister prayed with great fervency: "O Lord, if it 
please Thee to chastise the wicked for their sins, and to 
send forth Thy stormy winds to destroy their ships, 
we beg Thou mayest throw them upon our coasts rather 
[than] upon any other, that Thy chosen people may 
receive benefit therefrom, and with thankful hearts may 
glorify Thy holy name." 

There is not sufficient evidence here to prove 
that our young friend had begun to Boswellise 
Professor Trotz — there is but a single straw to 
show the direction of the wind. But we know that 
Boswell's instincts set consistently in that quarter ; 
and I, for one, shall not easily be convinced that 
this was an exception to the rule. 

There were other distinguished persons with 
whom he established an intimacy. He was re- 
ceived, apparently with perfect freedom, into the 
family of one of the governors of the province. 
Baron de Zuylen, a nobleman of great wealth and 
distinguished lineage. Out of this association 
sprang one of the most amusing of the numerous 
love-stories which diversify the biography of Bos- 



34 YOUNG BOSWELL 

well, and which will be narrated in its proper 
place. Meanwhile, it is only necessary to say here 
that love was one of the means by which he con- 
trived to get the better of that homesickness which 
had afflicted him upon his arrival in Utrecht. 

He also made the acquaintance, naturally, of 
the Reverend William Brown, Minister of the 
Scottish Church at Utrecht ; but the person whose 
conversation delighted him most was a young 
clergyman named Charles Giffardier, with whom 
he could amuse himself when in lighter mood. 
This clerical gentleman was destined, many years 
later, to achieve a modest reputation by his ap- 
pearance in Fanny Burney's "Diary," under the 
pseudonym of "Mr. Turbulent." Save for Miss 
Burney's notice of him and his riotous humour, 
he has no claim to remembrance. He was Queen 
Charlotte's French reader when Miss Burney knew 
him at court ; but the glimpse we are now to have 
of him shows him in close relations with the youth- 
ful Boswell nearly a quarter of a century before, at 
a time when his spirits were probably no less tur- 
bulent than in middle age. He told Boswell anec- 
dotes of French army life for him to record in his 
Commonplace Book, and, in general, fascinated 
him by his French assurance and gaiety. Boswell's 
letter to him, which is here printed, gives us 
the only reliable information which has so far 



IN HOLLAND AND GERMANY 35 

been discovered regarding Boswell's social life in 
Utrecht. 

Utrecht, 16 December, 1763. 
Monsieur, — 

By the address of this letter, you will see that I 
intended to write in Prench. By the address I mean 
the exordium, Monsieur. I did indeed fully intend to 
have written to you in that language, of which you 
know so much, and I so little. But I recollected that 
my French letters are as yet but mere themes, and that 
I should not be doing you a great kindness to give you 
the trouble to correct them. 

Although I cannot correct the language of your 
letter, yet I think I may take upon me to correct the 
sentiment of it. Your French morality, Giffardierre, 
is "lighter than vanity." A generous Briton gives it 
to the wind, with a smile of disdain. To be serious, 
your amorous sentences are vivacious. But are they 
proper from a son of the Church.? Indeed, Doctor, 
I am affraid not. Beleive me. Sir, such sallies are 
dangerous. They glance upon the mind, and dazzle 
the eye of discernment. Morality is permanent, altho' 
our sight be wavering; happy are they who can keep 
it constantly in view. I have experienced a good deal 
of variety, and I am firmly convinced that the true 
happiness of a ivian is propriety of conduct and the 
hope of divine favour. Excuse me, Giffardier, I am 
domineering over you, I allow. But don't you deserve 
it ? When you left this, was you not resolved to acquire 
"intellectual dignity" ? I desire that you may remem- 
ber your resolution. You have now a fair opportunity 
to become a real philosopher. If you improve your 



36 YOUNG BOSWELL 

solitude as you ought to do, the rest of your life may be 
past in chearfull tranquillity. Take this as it is meant 
and you will thank me. 

I now find Utrecht to be the same agreable place 
which my freind Dalrymple found it fifteen years ago. 
We have brilliant assemblys twice a week and private 
parties allmost every evening. La Comtesse de Nassau 
Beverwerd has taken me under her protection. She is 
the finest woman upon earth. She has shown me the 
[grea]test civility, and has introduced me [upon] the very 
best footing [into the gay] world of this city. I be[gin 
to] make acquaintance wi[th] the people of fashion, and 
hope to be agreable to them. There are so many 
beautiful! and amiable ladies in our circle that a quire 
of paper could not contain their praises, tho' written by 
a man of a much cooler fancy and a much smaller hand- 
writing than myself. 

I have stood upon my guard and have repelled dissi- 
pation. I am firm to my plan and I divide my time 
between study and amusement. "Happy man!" you 
will say. Our vacation begins this day. I shall go 
to the Hague next week, and expect to pass there some 
weeks of felicity. Do not allow yourself to weary in 
your present retreat. Acquire fortitude, and all will 
at least be supportable in this changeful! world. 

I am, Sir, 

Your sincere well-wisher and humble servant, 

James Boswell. 

Last post I had a long letter from Mr. Johnson. 

There is not much here about work; but then, 
one does not write letters about work. To-morrow 



IN HOLLAND AND GERMANY 37 

vacation begins, and our mind is filled with "gay 
ideas" once more ; there will be "weeks of felicity." 
The reader will not have forgotten that, according 
to our hero's earliest plans, there was to be much 
junketing about the Seven Provinces. He had 
discussed his plans with Johnson, and had even 
gone so far as to suggest that Johnson should come 
over to the Low Countries in the following summer, 
and tour them with him. This Christmas holiday, 
however, shall be spent at The Hague, where, as 
has been said, he could claim relationship with cer- 
tain aristocratic families. There was apparently 
no difficulty in obtaining the paternal assent to 
this plan, and the visit was made. He passed a 
fortnight in the "gay world" at The Hague, where 
he was graciously received by his relatives and by 
"many other people of distinction." Of his rela- 
tives we know nothing more ; but he formed an 
association with a group of young Scottish advo- 
cates, among whom was William Nairne, who, a 
decade later, accompanied Boswell and Johnson as 
far as St. Andrews on the Hebridean tour. It was 
he whom Johnson then described as "a gentleman 
who could stay with us only long enough to make 
us know how much we lost by his leaving us." An- 
other was Andrew Stuart, who later made a name 
for himself in the famous Douglas case, and fought 
a duel with Lord Thurlow. The three young fellows 



38 YOUNG BOSWELL 

coached from The Hague to Rotterdam. Stuart 
seized the reins from the Dutch blockhead who 
held them, and showed him how a party of young 
Britons expected to travel. Bos well said he drove 
so hard that the very moles came above ground to 
look at him. 

During this vacation he also visited Leyden, 
where A. Gronovius invited him to *'pass a Satur- 
day," and inspect certain notes on Greek lyric 
poetry. He put up at the Golden Ball, and ate his 
supper in the great parlour, or public room, of that 
inn. We get a glimpse of him from his Common- 
place Book, in which he habitually refers to himself 
in the third person — an indication of his instinc- 
tive tendency to make drama of the simplest events 
of his daily life. 

As he was eating a sober bit of supper, there entered 
three roaring West Indians, followed by a large dog. 
They made a deal of rude noise. The waiter thought 
it incumbent upon him to make an apology for their 
roughness. "Sir," said he, "they are very good- 
natured gentlemen." "Yes, yes," said Boswell, "I 
see they are very good-natured gentlemen, and in my 
opinion, sir, the dog seems to be as good-natured as 
any of the three." 

This anecdote is certainly not worth reprinting 
for its wit, but it may serve as a specimen of Bos- 
well's ability to lend to the most commonplace 



IN HOLLAND AND GERMANY 39 

occurrence a vividness and actuality that were 
later to be reckoned among his most conspicuous 
endowments. In Leyden, too, he met the Hon- 
ourable Charles Gordon, son of the Earl of Aber- 
deen, whom he invited to visit him in Utrecht. 
"Mr. Boswell," said Gordon, *'I would willingly 
come and see you for a day at Utrecht, but I am 
afraid I should tire you." "Sir," replied Boswell, 
"I defy you to tire me for one day." 

There is something significant in the absence 
from the Commonplace Book of the usual topics 
discussed by travellers, and the presence, instead, 
of such anecdotes as those just set down. Neither 
the canals in Holland nor the Alps in Switzerland 
seem to have impressed him. His indifference to 
architecture was complete, and the only pictures 
that I remember his having mentioned are the 
paintings found at Herculaneum, in which he felt 
an antiquarian rather than an artistic interest. 
The outward aspect of cities meant little to him. 
He called Berlin "a fine city," and said, at Rome, 
that he viewed the ancient remains with "venerable 
enthusiasm"; but Utrecht, Florence, Venice, Na- 
ples elicited no praise from his ordinarily enthu- 
siastic pen. Johnson's advice may account for a 
measure of this indifference, for he had counselled 
Boswell to go where there were courts and learned 
men ; he was " of Lord Essex's opinion, rather to 



40 YOUNG BOSWELL 

go an hundred miles to speak with one wise man, 
than five miles to see a fair town." It was Johnson 
who found water "the same everywhere," and 
thought the Giants' Causeway "worth seeing, but 
not worth going to see." 

Still, Boswell's indifference to scenery and to 
pictorial art is more than "a plume from the wing 
of Johnson" (as Wilkes would have called it), 
and these anecdotes contain the explanation. 
Conversation, it is to be remembered, was ever 
for him the purest joy in life; in travelling, it is 
the means of cultivating what the century loved 
to call "universality." The object of travel is to 
become a citizen of the world, rather than an 
arbiter elegantiarum. In the course of his travels, 
Boswell will associate with his own countrymen or 
not, according as he may profit by intercourse with 
them; for he has come abroad as a philosopher, 
not as a gypsy. Therefore, in learning to appre- 
ciate the civilisation of the Dutch or the Italians, 
he does not deem it necessary to repudiate his own 
country and strive to be mistaken for a native in 
the land where he happens to be. Buildings and 
canals and fortifications may be left to blear-eyed 
antiquarians with their tiresome pedantry. And 
so he recorded anecdotes and hon mots, not all of 
them clever, it is true, but, as a whole, reflecting 
a life crowded with human faces and memories, a 



1/ 



IN HOLLAND AND GERMANY 41 

life in which he had been not a mere spectator but 
a participant. For a biographer what training 
could have been better ? It was to be his function 
to exhibit life in panoramic fulness and detail, to 
catch the conversation of the salon and the club, 
and yet to avoid the dulness of realism by plucking 
merely the flower of that life. These anecdotes 
are, as it were, his early studies, his first attempts, 
his sketch-book, sein Hand zu weisen. 

Of his pride in his store of this kind he leaves us 
in no doubt. He tells how, years later, as he was 
one day writing in his "journal of conversations," 
General Paoli came upon him, and, noting his 
occupation, requested him to read something from 
the book. When the young man was long in 
selecting a specimen, Paoli taunted him : " Reason 
says I am a deer lost in a wood. It is difficult to 
find me." "I had," adds Boswell, "nothing to 
answer at the time, but afterwards — I forget how 
long — I said, * The wood is crowded with deer. 
There are so many good things, one is at a loss 
which to choose.'" To him it was a well-spring of 
wisdom, free from the taint of the study ; wisdom 
exhibiting herself as a glorified savoir-faire — wis- 
dom, that is, in its actual application to life by men 
of the keenest minds. Conversation, he asserted, 
which could be remembered and recorded, was 
like the rich freight which one brings home from a 



« » 



42 YOUNG BOSWELL 

journey that has been profitable as well as pleasant 
The Christmas vacation was followed by another 
term, and that, in due course, by the summer holi- 
days ; and it was clear to Boswell that it was time 
for him to be gone from among the Dutch. The 
time had come to "proceed" to the glorious south. 
But how was it to be managed ? 

At this moment luck favoured him once more. 
Late in June there returned from Scotland to the 
Continent a man the romance of whose early years 
had been equalled by the exalted station which he 
had attained in his age. This was George Keith, 
the Earl Marischal of Scotland, the intimate 
friend of Voltaire and Rousseau, the favourite and 
trusted adviser of Frederick the Great. In youth 
he had twice been out campaigning for the Stuarts, 
and had found it well, after the failure of the 
campaign of 1719, to live abroad. He came under 
the protection of the King of Prussia, whose per- 
sonal ambassador he was at the courts of France 
and of Spain. Upon his communication of valuable 
political intelligence to William Pitt, he was par- 
doned by George II, as that monarch was nearing 
the end of his life. The Earl returned to Scotland 
for a time. He was now nearly seventy years old, 
and had probably made up his mind to end his 
days in his native land. During this residence he 
met Lord Auchinleck, with whom he became inti- 



IN HOLLAND AND GERMANY 43 

mate. He had served, in youth, under the Earl of 
Mar, a relative of Mrs. Boswell. But his peaceful 
retirement was interrupted in the spring of 1764, 
when he was urgently invited by his Prussian mas- 
ter to return to Potsdam. This he agreed to do. 

Now, just at this time Lord Auchinleck was in 
doubt — as usual — regarding the best course to 
pursue with his son James. The boy was eager to 
travel and see life. Beyond a doubt, the matter 
was laid before the Earl Marischal, and a decision 
reached that young Boswell was to visit the Ger- 
man courts, and to travel in the company of the 
Earl as far as Berlin. To Lord Auchinleck it 
must have seemed a safe and happy solution of 
a pressing problem. 

Lord Keith left England on the seventh of June, 
and was in company with a young Turkish lady, 
Emetulla by name, who appears in Boswell's notes 
as "Mademoiselle Amete, the Turk." She was the 
Earl's adopted daughter, a lady whom his brother. 
General Keith, is said to have rescued at the siege 
of Oczakow. 

At some spot or other, then, in the Low Coun- 
tries or in Western Germany, Boswell joined the 
Earl and his fair charge, and a remarkable trio 
they must have been : the venerable diplomat, 
who was received with all possible attention where- 
ever the party stopped ; the silent Turkish lady. 



44 YOUNG BOSWELL 

and the eager young traveller, who was at last on 
the wing. That Bos well undertook to collect 
materials for an intimate sketch of the Earl 
Marischal is certain. He promised Rousseau that, 
on his return from Corsica, he would show him a 
"portrait," that is, a character-sketch, with anec- 
dotes and reminiscences of the Earl Marischal, 
who was now old and likely soon to pass away. 
One anecdote recorded in the Commonplace Book 
takes us far back, to the days of the Old Pretender 
and the uprising of 1715, when Lord Keith was an 
oflScer of cavalry. 

In the year 1715, Lord Marischal observed a High- 
lander crying, and looking at the poor fellow, he ob- 
served he had no shoes. He sent one to him, who 
spoke Erse, and bid him not to be cast down, for he 
should have shoes. "Sir," said the Highlander, "I 
want no shoes ; I am crying to see a Macdonald retire 
from his enemy." 

As for the Earl, he was amazed at his new friend, 
who confided to him the most remarkable notions. 
Some months later he wrote to Rousseau, " Boswell 
is a very fine fellow, but full of hypochondriac and 
visionary ideas. He has often seen spirits. I do 
hope that he will not fall into the hands of people 
who will turn his head completely." 

The little party reached Berlin on July 7, and 



IN HOLLAND AND GERMANY 45 

two days later Boswell wrote to Mademoiselle de 
Zuylen in Utrecht : — 

I have had a most agreeable journey. My Lord 
Marischal was most entertaining company, and the 
Turkish lady talked extremely well when indolence 
did not keep her in silence. We were very happy at 
Brunswic. I have been only two days at Berlin. But 
I see that much happiness awaits me in this beautif uU 
capital. The German formality and state pleases me 
much, for I am the true old Scots Baron. 

In this short quotation there is much that is worthy 
of notice. The young Turkish lady, for example, 
seems to be madequately described. She had no 
conversation. How, therefore, was a Boswell to 
record her adequately.'' She had, apparently, an 
Oriental indolence, but not the vivacity of Made- 
moiselle de Zuylen, to whom he was writing. 

It would be interesting to know if Boswell saw, 
or tried to see, King Frederick. German princes 
he certainly did meet and converse with, as he was 
careful later to narrate. But he was soon to weary 
of German etiquette. As the young friend of the 
Earl Marischal, all doors were open to him, and he 
saw what there was to see. He went to Charlot- 
tenberg on the occasion of the betrothal of the 
Princess of Brunswick to the Prince of Prussia, 
but found nothing worthy of record except a mot 
of his own. He was presented to the British 



46 YOUNG BOSWELL 

envoy, Andrew Mitchell, in whose conversation, 
he avers, he found "uncommon pleasure." The 
envoy had, apparently, listened with patience to 
the young fellow, and then given him some good 
advice. 

To Mitchell Boswell wrote a couple of letters 
which have been reprinted as often as any that he 
ever wrote. They have been laid under contribu- 
tion by those who enjoy scolding at Boswell, for 
they are, indeed, very impudent letters. It had 
occurred to Boswell that he might "use" the 
British envoy. Might it not be possible to prevail 
on him to write to Lord Auchinleck and recom- 
mend that James be permitted to make the Italian 
tour.'^ It was a peculiarly Boswellian scheme, of 
the sort which he had before this carried success- 
fully into execution. Had not Sir David Dal- 
rymple interceded with his father on the boy's 
behalf.'* And so he confided to Mitchell that the 
"words of the Apostle Paul, 'I must see Rome,* 
had been strongly home in*^ upon his mind! He 
explained that he had passed a year in Utrecht, 
where he had recovered his "inclination for study 
and rational thinking." Now he is ready for his 
travels; but his father's views are unfortunately 
"entirely different": he thinks that James had 
better go back to Utrecht for another winter. 
Clearly it is not that the father merely objects to 



IN HOLLAND AND GERMANY 47 

the boy's absence from Scotland another year. 
Cannot Lord Auchinleck be made to reaHse that 
his son intends to travel through Italy, not as a 
"Mi Lord Anglois," but as a scholar and a "man 
of elegant curiosity"? Surely, if Mr. Mitchell 
would be so kind as to explain to Lord Auchinleck, 
all would be well. "I would beg. Sir," he says, 
"that you may write to my father your opinion as 
to this matter, and put it in the light which you 
may think it deserves." The father had gone so 
far as to consent to a visit to Paris ; surely, surely 
it is not beyond hope that he will consent to Italy 
also. 

Can the reader believe that Mr. Mitchell was so 
hard-hearted as to decline this ingenuous request ? 
It is the business of envoys to give cautious advice, 
and to avoid becoming a catspaw. Mitchell acted 
like a true envoy, and wrote to Boswell that he 
would do well to obey his father. Obviously. 
But the advice came too late. Lord Auchinleck 
had already yielded, and Boswell could not resist 
the temptation to triumph over the envoy : — 

You tell me gravely to follow the plan which my 
father prescribes, whatever it may be, as in doing so, 
I shall certainly act most wisely. I forgive you this ; 
for I say just the same to young people whom I advise. 
... I have, however, the happiness to inform you that 
my father has consented that I shall go to Italy. 



48 YOUNG BOSWELL 

He wrote this letter after he had left Germany. 
Five months had passed, and it was again the 
Christmas season. Our young traveller had "pro- 
ceeded" as far as Geneva, and had, indeed, already 
met Rousseau. Life was opening up to him. Life is 
what you choose to make it. The world is one*s 
oyster. As for the game which he had been play- 
ing with his father, it was now over, and youth had 
won. Those who have not forgotten their own 
youth may be able to pardon the boy for obviously, 
and a little impudently, relishing his triumph. 



CHAPTER III 
WITH THE FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS 

The winter of 1764 and 1765 has hitherto been 
almost a blank page in the biography of Boswell ; 
but with the aid of his letters to Rousseau, which 
have never been published or even read over by 
scholars, but copies of which have, by great good 
fortune, come into my hands, we are enabled to tell 
in outline the story of his life during this period, 
and to see the influence of events in fixing the lit- 
erary ambitions of him who was to be the Prince of 
Biographers. 

Boswell departed from Germany, then, dis- 
gusted with courts, and repining at the dearth of 
great men in that country, went to Switzer- 
land. He went first to the Val de Travers, where 
he proposed to meet Rousseau. He had decided 
to approach him with no other recommendation 
than his own social genius. Now, inasmuch as this 
was not, in general, Boswell's method of approach 
to a great man, we are justified, I think, in assum- 
ing that he had failed to find anyone who would 
give him the necessary letter of introduction. Lord 
Keith might have done it, but he knew Rousseau 
all too well to care to do it. It is clear that he 



.1 



50 YOUNG BOSWELL 

explained to Boswell that Rousseau was living in 
retreat from the world and denying himself to all 
visitors. Boswell had better give up the attempt 
to meet him. But the young Scot was not easily 
discouraged. He had never yet failed to meet 
anyone whom he had made up his mind to meet. 
There must be ways of prevailing even upon a 
Rousseau. There are a thousand kinds of appeal 
that may be made to a philosopher : one might, for 
example, rest one's case on one's dire need of spir- 
itual counsel. It is only necessary to show a phil- 
osopher that one is a worthy disciple, that one has 
lived a life not unlike that of the master. And so 
the artful creature composed the following letter, 
which I render into English, since it is somewhat 
difficult to see the implications of Boswell's tor- 
tured French phrases. 

Val db Traveb, 3 December 1764. 
Monsieur, — 

I am a gentleman of an old Scotch family [un ancien 
gentilhomme ecossois]. You know my rank. I am 
twenty-four years old. You know my age. It is six- 
teen months since I left Great Britain, completely in- 
sular, knowing hardly a word of French. I have been 
in Holland and in Germany, but not yet in France. You 
will therefore excuse my language. I am on my travels, 
and have a genuine desire to perfect myself. I have 
come here in the hope of seeing you. 

I have heard. Sir, that it is difficult to meet you [que 
vous etes fort difficile] and that you have refused the 



THE FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS 51 

visits of several persons of the highest distinction. For 
that. Sir, I respect you all the more. If you were to 
receive everyone who came to you just to be able to say 
boastingly, "I have seen him," your house would no 
longer be the retreat of exquisite Genius nor of elevated 
Piety ; and I should not be enthusiastically eager to be 
received there. 

I present myself, Sir, as a man of unique merit, as a 
man with a sensitive heart, a spirit lively yet melan- 
choly. Ah! if all I have suffered gives me no special 
merit in the eyes of M. Rousseau, why was I ever so 
created, and why did he ever write as he has done 
[a-t-il iellement ecrit]? 

Do you ask me for letters of recommendation? Is 
there need of any with a man like you ? An introduc- 
tion is necessary in the world of affairs, in order to pro- 
tect those who have no insight for impostors. But, Sir, 
can you, who have studied human nature, be deceived 
in a man's character ? My idea of you is this : aside 
from the unknowable essence of the human soul, you 
have a perfect knowledge of all the principles of body 
and mind ; their actions, their sentiments, in short, of 
whatever they can accomplish or acquire in the way of 
influence over man. In spite of all this. Sir, I dare to 
present myself before you. I dare to submit myself to 
the proof. In cities and in courts where there is a 
numerous society, it is possible to disguise one's self; 
it is possible even to dazzle the eyes of the greatest phil- 
osophers. But I put myself to the severest proof. It 
is in the silence and the solitude of your hallowed retreat 
that you shall judge of me ; think you that in such cir- 
cumstances I should be capable of dissimulation ? 



52 YOUNG BOSWELL 

Your writings, Sir, have softened my heart, raised my 
spirits, and kindled my imagination. Believe me, you 
will be glad to see me. You know Scotch pride. Sir, 
I come to you to make myself worthy to belong to a 
nation that has produced a Fletcher of Saltoun, and an 
Earl Marischal. Pardon me, Sir, but I am moved ! I 
can no longer refrain myself. O beloved St. Preux! 
Inspired Mentor! Eloquent and amiable Rousseau! 
I have a presentiment that a noble friendship is to be 
born this day. 

I learn with great regret. Sir, that you are frequently 
indisposed. You may be so at present ; but I implore 
you not to let that prevent your receiving me. You will 
find in me a simplicity which will in no wise disturb you 
and a cordiality which may assist you in forgetting your 
pains. 

I have much to say to you. Although but a young 
man, I have had a variety of experiences, with which 
you will be impressed. I am in serious and delicate 
circumstances, and am most ardently desirous of having 
the counsels of the author of " La Nouvelle Heloise." If 
you are the benevolent man that I think you, you will 
not hesitate to bestow them upon me. Open your door, 
then. Sir, to a man who dares to say that he deserves to 
enter there. Trust a unique foreigner. You will never 
repent it. But, I beg of you, be alone. In spite of my 
enthusiasm, after having written you in this manner, I 
am not sure that I would not rather forego seeing you 
than meet you for the first time in company. I await 
your reply with impatience. 

BoSWELL. 



THE FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS 53 

Who could refuse such a request ? Certainly not 
Jean Jacques Rousseau. Apparently the interview 
came off exactly as Boswell desired it. From 
remarks in later letters and hints dropped here 
and there, it is possible to reconstruct the general 
scheme of their association. Since romantic mel- 
ancholy had become, thanks to Rousseau, the 
fashionable pose, Boswell told of the tempera- 
mental gloom that frequently descended upon him ; 
of the hypochondria that had afflicted him in 
Utrecht. (It is noteworthy that with Boswell, as 
with ourselves, the sharpest fits of melancholia 
were coincident with confinement in harness.) He 
told him all this, and elicited from Rousseau the 
compliment which he never tired of quoting : "II y 
a des points ou nos ames sont lies.'* 

He told him, moreover, of his affairs of the heart, 
and explained that he was in doubt with regard to 
his latest flame, Mile. Isabella de Zuylen (whom he 
called "Zelide"), as being the final choice of his 
heart. He sent him a sketch of his own life, — 
which would be worth its weight in gold to-day if 
it could be turned up, — in order that the great 
man might be thoroughly acquainted with his new 
friend. They conversed about the Earl Marischal, 
and Boswell proposed to write a "Portrait" (as it 
was called in the salons) or character-sketch of him. 
(It would appear that Rousseau's genius recog- 



54 YOUNG BOSWELL 

nized the youngster's fitness for this kind of com- 
position.) He got a promise from him of a letter 
to his philosophic friend, De Leyre, the librarian 
of the Duke of Parma, destined to achieve a cer- 
tain prominence in the French Revolution — a man 
whose acquaintance Boswell promptly cultivated 
in Italy. 

He begged Rousseau to correspond with him. 
He demanded his advice with regard to the em- 
ployment of his time in Italy. Inasmuch as Rous- 
seau was a musician, Boswell, in the third of his 
letters, discovered in himself a penchant for that 
art. He tells Rousseau that he likes to sing, con- 
fesses that he plays a bit on the flute, but that 
he despises it. Here was a sorry blunder : he did 
not know that Rousseau himself was addicted to 
playing the flute. It is our loss that he did not 
know it, for he would never have failed to expa- 
tiate on so important a bond between them. Some 
two years before, he had tried the violin, but found 
it a difficult instrument and gave it up. "Tell me, 
would it not be well for me to apply myself seri- 
ously to music — up to a certain point ? Tell me 
which instrument I should take up. It is late, I 
admit ; but should I not have the pleasure of mak- 
ing continous progress, and — " But it is no 
longer fair to conceal from the reader the ipsissima 
verba of the French original: "Ne serais-je pas 



THE FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS 55 

capable d'adoucir ma vieillesse par les sons de ma 
lyre?" The vision of James Boswell in the role 
of Ossian, with white beard streaming to the winds, 
amid the romantic glades of Auchinleck, soothing 
his stricken age with a lyre, is one that no kindly 
imagination will reject. 

But Rousseau was more than a musician, more 
than a philosopher retired from the world. He 
was a teacher of conduct, and his influence had 
long since been felt as a force in the daily lives of 
men. Therefore Boswell submits to him a prac- 
tical question of morals. He cites, with a vivid- 
ness of narrative that was later to become the most 
distinguished of his literary qualities, an affaire 
d'honneur in which he had become involved the 
summer before, and from which he had escaped 
with more skill than glory. I give it without ab- 
breviation. 

Last summer in Germany I found myself in the midst 
of a large company, a company very disagreeable to me 
and in which I was sorry to be losing my time. The talk 
was all in praise of the French. Thereupon I declaimed 
against that nation in the rudest terms. An officer 
rose, came to my side and said, "Monsieur, I am a 
Frenchman, and none but a scoundrel would speak as 
you have done of that nation." We were still at dinner. 
I made him a bow. I had half an hour for reflection. 
After dinner I led the captain out into the garden. I 
said to him, "Sir, I am greatly embarrassed. I have 



56 YOUNG BOSWELL 

been very impolite. I am sincerely sorry. But you 
have made use of a word which a man of honour cannot 
endure, and I must have satisfaction. If it be possible 
to avoid a quarrel, I should be delighted, for I was in the 
wrong. Will you be so good as to beg my pardon before 
the company? I will first beg yours. If you cannot 
agree to my proposal, we must fight, although I admit 
to you that I shall do so with repugnance." I addressed 
him with the sang-froid of a philosopher determined to 
do his duty. The officer was a fine fellow. He said to 
me, "Sir, I will do as you wish." We returned to the 
company, and made our apologies, one to the other. 
We embraced. The affair was ended. I could not, 
however, rest content without consulting two or three 
Scotsmen. I said to them, " Gentlemen, I am a simple 
man. I am not in touch with your social rules, but I 
believe that I have acted like a man. You are my com- 
patriots. I ask your advice." They assured me that 
the affair had been honourably adjusted between us. 
They advised me to take this experience as a lesson for 
the future. 

But still the young man's mind is not at rest. 
He charges himself at times with cowardice — 
*'Je suis d*un temperament craintif." The phil- 
osopher's opinion is sought. "What do you seri- 
ously think of duels?" There is the peculiarly 
Boswellian touch, the conscious art of the inter- 
viewer disguising itself under the mask of naivete. 
In dealing with Boswell, nothing is easier than to 
let our attention dwell on his apparent simplicity, 



THE FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS 57 

or vanity, or even folly, to the point of entirely 
missing the thing that he would be at. What 
Rousseau happens to think about Boswell's valor 
in this particular incident is, of course, of strictly 
secondary importance compared with the primary 
intention of getting the great man to express him- 
self. One may sacrifice a great deal of personal 
esteem if one can draw forth from Rousseau a dis- 
sertation on duelling. And so Boswell adds to the 
question I have quoted this skillful observation: 
"You have not said enough of the matter in your 
*Heloise.' There are people who think that the 
Gospel teaches us to be too supine in this regard." 
Clearly the young man has prepared the ground. 
If Rousseau replies at all, he can hardly avoid the 
expression of his views on duelling, and the pages 
of Boswell's note-book (and of his future "Remi- 
niscences of Rousseau") will be enriched with a 
unique morsel. 

But the ending of this third letter from which I 
have been quoting is, in truth, one of the most 
delightful and characteristic bits that our bio- 
graphical adventurer ever penned. His busy mind 
had discovered yet another avenue of approach to 
the retired sage, which would lead (could one but 
get started upon it) straight into the domestic 
privacies of life which Boswell so dearly prized. 
Obviously one means of approach to a man is 



58 YOUNG BOSWELL 

through his mistress. Therefore Boswell ends his 
letter thus: "You will not take offense if I write 
occasionally to Mile. Vasseur. I swear that I have 
no intention of carrying off your duenna [d'enlever 
voire gouvernante], I sometimes form romantic 
plans ; never impossible plans." 

What reply — if any — Jean Jacques made to 
this attractive proposal, I cannot tell. Nor, alas, 
have any letters from Boswell to Therese Le Vas- 
seur as yet rewarded my search. But certain it 
is that the proposal gave no offence. For when, 
some thirteen months later, Rousseau crossed the 
Channel to England, he went in company with his 
philosophic friend, David Hume, and entrusted 
Therese to the care of Boswell, who crossed some 
weeks later. 

But there was another philosophic retreat for our 
young enthusiast to penetrate — Ferney. There 
dwelt a man who interested him no less than Rous- 
seau — Voltaire, now in his seventy-first year, but 
brilliant still, brilliant as a meteor which, with 
fear of change, perplexes monarchs. Just how the 
genial young tuft-hunter got into the presence, we 
cannot tell; but it is probable that he brought a 
letter of introduction from the Earl Marischal, 
who must have had less scruple about exposing 
Voltaire to the Boswellian bacillus than the hypo- 
chondriac Rousseau. Be this as it may, Boswell 



THE FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS 59 

was received, and by his own statement — and he 
was not given to inaccuracy — spent an hour with 
the aged philosopher, in conversation tete-a-tete. 

Can you imagine the scene — the withered but 
still sinister Son of the Morning, with his satirical 
smile and his benevolent eye, confronting the busy, 
inquisitive, entertaining young Scot? "It was," 
says Boswell in describing the interview to Rous- 
seau, "a most serious conversation. He talked of 
his natural religion in a striking manner." James, 
you see, had introduced the subject of religion — 
doubtless by means of citing his own infidelities. 
Already he has in mind an account of his discussion 
with Voltaire which shall correct the popular im- 
pression of him as devoid of the religious instinct. 

After Voltaire had talked for a time, the young 
man said to himself, — and on the principle 
that James Boswell uttered whatever came into 
his head, I do not scruple to assert that he cried 
aloud, — "Aut Erasmus, aut diabolus!" In dis- 
cussing his favourite theme of the nature of the 
soul, Boswell asked Voltaire a question which well 
indicates the skill with which he ensnared his 
destined prey, and which, indeed, has a very 
modern ring to it. "I asked him if he could give 
me any notion of the situation of our ideas which 
we have totally forgotten at the time, yet shall 
afterwards recollect. He paused, meditated a 



60 YOUNG BOSWELL 

little, and acknowledged his ignorance in the spirit 
of a philosophical poet, by repeating, as a very 
happy allusion, a passage in Thomson's * Seasons ' : 
*Aye,' said he, '"Where sleep the winds when it 
is calm?""* 

Of course he got Voltaire to express an opinion 
of Rousseau ; and tells us, in his "Tour to Corsica,'* 
that the older philosopher consistently spoke of the 
younger with a "satirical smile.** Yet Boswell 
let his romantic imagination (as he would have 
called it) play with the notion of bringing the two 
men together, and even had the temerity to say 
to Rousseau, "In spite of all that has happened, 
you would have loved him that evening.'* An 
astute remark, which may lead to much. For, if 
Rousseau replies to the letter, he may assent to 
this pious opinion or he may reject it, but in either 
case there begins new matter for a biographer. As 
we know, neither James Boswell nor anybody else 
reconciled the two philosophers; but James, I 
regret to say, did something to increase the as- 
perity between them. In the spring of 1776, after 
Rousseau had quarrelled with his English friends, 
Boswell designed and published a "ludicrous 
print,'* into which he introduced his three philo- 
sophical friends, Rousseau, Hume, and Voltaire. 
Rousseau in the shaggy attire of a "wild man" (as 
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THE FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS 61 

centre of the picture, while Voltaire smiles cynically 
in the background, as one of the bystanders cries 
out, "Wip 'im, Voltaire !'* 

On New Year's Day, 1765, James Boswell de- 
parted from Geneva, in search of new worlds to 
conquer and other great men to record. He had 
come into conjunction with two of the major 
planets of the literary heavens. He had filled 
note-books with his accounts of their conversation 
— notebooks whose loss the world will long deplore. 
He passed from Geneva to Turin with his social 
and anecdotical soul aflame, rapt away, one fancies, 
in a vision of all the glory that might be his. 

On the tenth of January, he learned that John 
Wilkes, in political exile from his native land, was, 
for the moment, in Turin. At once he prepared 
himself for the attack. O reader, do you per- 
chance know the ballet of "Tamar"? If you do, 
you will recall the close of that vivid drama. 
Tamar, having finished off one victim, beholds 
from her window, as she sinks back into momentary 
ease, the approach of another wayfarer. She lifts 
herself from cushioned luxury, and beckons to him 
afar. And so the piece ends as it had begun. Or 
are you, perchance, a reader of M. Benoit's sultry 
romance, "L*Atlantide"? If so, you will recall 
the cruel loveliness of the princess, whose malign 
ambition is to surround herself with the glistening 



62 YOUNG BOSWELL 

images of her lovers, preserved for ever, actual yet 
golden. Now such a passion as that of Tamar or 
the Atlantide possessed the innocent soul of James 
Boswell, biographer. It is a paltry business to 
think of him as a parasite who attacked but a single 
victim. Nay, rather, his was the golden hand of 
the realist who preserves human life in its actuality, 
yet ever at its best and fullest. And if it be that 
there mingled with his vision of an Atlantidean 
circle of the golden great a baser ambition to shine 
in the reflected light of his splendid victims, who 
shall begrudge it him.'^ Is not the artist worthy 
of his fame ? 

And so John Wilkes, demagogue, "Apostle of 
Liberty," esteemed the wittiest and the most 
dangerous man of his day, comes within James 
Boswell's ken. He is not to be won as were the 
philosophers. Our artist, however, knows many 
wiles, and the approach which he will make in 
this case will be of a quite different kind. But that, 
to make use of a time-honored phrase, is another 
story. 

[Note. In a letter from Horace Walpole to Thomas Gray, 
written not long after Boswell's encounters with the French 
philosophers, a pertinent reference to the interviewer's 
methods, and their effect upon at least one of the inter- 
viewed, may be found. 



THE FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS 63 

" 18th February, 1768 
"Pray read the new account of Corsica; what relates 
to Paoli will amuse you much. The author, Boswell, is 
a strange being, and, like Cambridge, has a rage for 
knowing anybody that was ever talked of. He forced 
himself upon me in spite of my teeth and my doors, and 
I see he has given a foolish account of all he could pick 
up from me. . , . He then took an antipathy to me on 
Rousseau's account, abused me in the newspapers, and 
expected Rousseau to do so too ; but as he came to see 
me no more, I forgave him the rest. I see he is now a 
little sick of Rousseau himself, but I hope it will not 
cure him of his anger to me; however, his book will 
amuse you."] 



CHAPTER IV 
BOSWELL AND WILKES 

The name of John Wilkes has come down to 
posterity vague, to be sure, but with a definite 
connotation of evil. There is about it, as there is 
about that of Paine, a suspicion of brimstone and 
demagogy. It is derived, perhaps, from that cruel 
sketch by Hogarth, in which Wilkes is depicted as 
his enemies saw him, hideously cross-eyed and with 
his heavy sensual mouth twisted into an evil leer. 
The artist has contrived to do more than set down 
in his hard outlines the impression of Wilkes's 
physical deformity: he has interpreted it as the 
outward mark of an obliquity of character. 

The evil that Wilkes did has lived after him. 
And yet, if any man of the century had a right to 
hope that he would survive his contemporary repu- 
tation, and be thought of as playing no mean part 
in the development of British freedom, that man 
was John Wilkes. With the attempt on the part of 
George III to drive him out of Parliament we may, 
in truth, read the story of the last open attempt 
to exalt the prerogative of the crown over the right 
of the people to choose their own representatives 
in the House of Commons. It would seem as if 




Jolin JV likes 

IlosartliV engraving:, from a portrait oChis own, sliowin- the issues of the 

North Briion,oi\\\\w\\ Number 17 coiitaiiR-il Wilkes's attack upon the paiiit.-r 

and N'umher 4") led to Wilkes's imprisonment in the Tower 



BOSWELL AND WILKES 65 

Wilkes might have been remembered as one who, 
in winning the devotion of the common people and 
the personal enmity of his King, had vindicated a 
great principle of English liberty ; but his reputa- 
tion was against him. He was a gay profligate. 
He contrived, in the course of a long career, to 
outrage every tradition of British respectability. 
He was a free-thinker, a disloyal husband, and a 
wit. He delighted in wine and in revelry, and 
purveyed foul literature among his friends. He 
was suspected, not without some justice, of using 
his appeal for British liberty to advance his per- 
sonal interests. He had an obvious delight in the 
mischief which he caused, and employed his polit- 
ical sagacity to show his friends how close he could 
sail to the wind. It was impossible, however, to 
belittle his general attractiveness, for he had 
demonstrated his physical courage upon the field 
of honour, and retained his good spirits and his 
wit while shut up in prison. He was a man of 
education, genuinely interested in the classics, and 
ambitious of becoming an historian. He was a 
loving father and a devoted friend. He could win 
over an enemy by his courtesy and his wit. In 
short, he was a man of whom respectable British 
folk could make nothing at all. 

It was in the spring of 1763 that Wilkes faced the 
first great crisis of his political life. He was at the 



66 YOUNG BOSWELL 

time one of the Whig leaders of the opposition, 
against the young King and his Prime Minister, 
Lord Bute. Bute, who was thought to be the tool 
of the King's mother, had the additional misfor- 
tune of being a Scot. The people of England had 
not yet forgotten the days of '45 and the Scottish 
devotion to the Young Pretender, and Bute had 
proved himself unable to dispel the national preju- 
dice. He had, it is true, sought to establish the 
popularity of his government by means of the 
journalist and the pamphleteer. One of these, 
Smollett, had established a paper entitled "The 
Briton," which existed to spread Bute's policy of 
royal aggrandisement. Wilkes saw an opportu- 
nity to establish a rival journal, which should play 
upon the national dislike of the Scots, and rouse 
the people against the influences to which the King 
had committed himself and the Tory party. He 
challenged Smollett and the supporters of "The 
Briton" by naming his own journal, with charac- 
teristic impudence, "The North-Briton." It be- 
came notorious for its free speech and its personal 
invective ; but results proved the eflScacy of the 
weapons which he had chosen. In April Bute 
resigned. Wilkes at once brought "The North- 
Briton" to an end. 

The succeeding Prime Minister was George 
Grenville, a man of feeble powers and stubborn 



BOSWELL AND WILKES 67 

character, whose policies, as soon as they were an- 
nounced, proved to be as offensive to Wilkes and 
his party as those of his predecessor had been. 
Grenville's policies, which disgusted Wilkes as 
much as Bute's had done, were set before Parlia- 
ment by King George in the initial "speech from 
the throne." Wilkes put forth a new issue of "The 
North-Briton," numbering it, consecutively with 
the preceding issues, 45. In this paper, though 
Wilkes was as violent as ever in the language which 
he employed, he was careful to guard himself by 
the assertion that the royal address was always to 
be looked upon as the speech of the ministry. The 
King, he remarked, was "responsible to his people 
for the due exercise of the royal functions, in the 
choice of his minister, &c., equal with the meanest 
of subjects in his particular duty." Such language 
did not please the young King and his new minis- 
ter, and they proceeded at once to move against 
Wilkes. A "general warrant," that is, a warrant 
for the arrest and imprisonment of anyone who has 
fallen under the suspicion of the bearer, was rashly 
issued by Lord Halifax. It was the intention to 
shut Wilkes up in the Tower and to bring him to 
trial for sedition. Wilkes, who seems at no time to 
have lost sight of the amusing aspect of what was 
going on, eluded his captors for a time, did what he 
could to destroy or spoil the evidence against him. 



68 YOUNG BOSWELL 

and then permitted himself to be taken. He was 
at once committed to the Tower. 

There ensued a period of the utmost excitement. 
Here was a flagrant abuse of the principle of the 
liberty of the subject. Were the free-born to be 
hurled into prison at the whim of the House of 
Hanover.'^ And yet were all these solemn prin- 
ciples of English freedom to be invoked on behalf 
of a libertine who had spoken lightly of sacred 
majesty ? What was to become of British decorum 
and the ceremonial which Englishmen are scrupu- 
lous in paying to their elected monarch? Yet 
Wilkes had been clapped into prison by a display 
of power as tyrannical as that of a Persian despot. 
No prisoner of the Bastille was more unjustly in- 
carcerated. What was to be done.f^ As usual, 
matters were patched up — for the moment. On 
May 6, Wilkes was brought before the Court of 
Common Pleas, and, after a hearing, discharged, 
on the ground that the privilege of Parliament 
extended to his case, and that he ought never to 
have been arrested. But it was clear to all the 
world that the prisoner had been released as a 
privileged person, and that his vindication was by 
no means complete. Wilkes emerged with a tre- 
mendously increased reputation — a problem to 
his party, a thorn in the side of the King, and the 
idol of the crowd. It was at this moment, when 



BOSWELL AND WILKES 69 

Wilkes's name was on every lip, when his every 
word and every act were watched with the most 
anxious care by all who had the good of the nation 
at heart, that young James Boswell, just out of 
leading-strings, determined to make his acquaint- 
ance. 

The two had little enough in common. Wilkes 
was a Whig ; Boswell was a Tory, and a Tory who 
had an instinctive sympathy with the most ex- 
travagant claims of royalty. Wilkes, though a 
nominal adherent of the English Church, was a 
free-thinker. Boswell was a Christian and longed 
to be a Catholic. Wilkes, unlike Boswell, was no 
respecter of persons. Moreover, he affected, in 
particular, a contempt of Scots. But all this was 
no let to Boswell. He declined to take seriously 
the older man's dislike of his race ; at worst, it but 
emphasised the necessity of showing him how 
metropolitan a Scotsman might be. In all his 
later relations with Wilkes, Boswell kept his nation- 
ality to the fore, so that in time Wilkes came to 
call him "my old Lord of Scotland," and said he 
looked as if he had a thousand men at his back. 

But it was the gaiety of Wilkes that appealed 
especially to Boswell. It was clear to him that 
Wilkes, with all his eminence, never forgot to 
"shine," never forgot that social intercourse with 
the world of wit was the goal of human endeavour. 



70 YOUNG BOSWELL 

Here was the link between them. Here was the 
method of approach. "I glory in being an en- 
thusiast for my king and for my religion, and I 
scorn the least appearance of dissimulation," he 
wrote to him after the establishment of their in- 
timacy. "As the gay John Wilkes, you are most 
pleasing to me. . . . Let serious matters be out 
of the question, and you and I can perfectly har- 
monise.'* In one respect Boswell knew that he 
was the equal of Wilkes — in impudence. He 
would show that he knew as well as another how 
to deal with a gay dog. An attitude of trembling 
reverence is not the way to win a boon companion, 
and therefore of this role in his repertory Boswell 
made no use in his relations with Wilkes. He 
showed him from the beginning that he was not 
dazzled; and the great man, like many another, 
responded instinctively to the genial youth who 
dared to show that he was not afraid of him. 

The immediate occasion of Boswell's first meet- 
ing with Wilkes is, unhappily, unknown. It must 
have occurred about the time of the first meeting 
with Johnson. At any rate, by July, 1763, their 
association was well under way, and Boswell had 
begun to collect anecdotes about Wilkes. "I must 
tell you a joke on Wilkes," he writes to Sir David 
Dalrymple. "He was coming out of Ranelagh 
some nights ago, and the footmen were bawling 



BOSWELL AND WILKES 71 

out, *Mr. Wilkes's coach! Mr. WUkes's coach!' 
Lord Kelly run to the door, and cried, ' Mr. Wilkes's 
coach. No. 45 !' — a number which had long since 
become infamous from its association with Wilkes 
and the 'North-Briton.'" 

But it was unfortunately necessary to interrupt 
the collection of anecdotes, and obey the paternal 
commands to go abroad and study the law. More- 
over, Wilkes was himself on the point of leaving 
England. "I told him," writes Boswell to Sir 
David Dalrymple, "I was to be in Utrecht next 
winter. He said, *If you will write to me in 
George Street, I will send you the detail of this 
country.' This was very obliging. It would be a 
vast treasure." At this point Boswell remembers 
that he is writing to an older man whose political 
opinions were far from radical, and adds dutifully, 
"But I don't know' if it would be proper to keep 
a correspondence with a gentleman in his present 
capacity. It was a great honour to me his offering 
it. I must be proud. Advise me fully about it." 
And so the separation between the two took 
place ; but there was no opportunity for Boswell to 
acquire the vast treasure of a weekly detail of the 
news of Great Britain. As soon as the House of 
Commons convened in the following November, 
the attack upon Wilkes was renewed, and he had 
no rest until the end of the year, when he once more 



72 YOUNG BOSWELL 

left England for France. In January he was ex- 
pelled from the House, and a month later was 
found guilty in the courts of having printed No. 
45 of "The North-Briton." As he did not return 
to England to receive his sentence, he was declared 
an outlaw. 

Such was, roughly, the posture of events in 1764, 
while Boswell was studying in Utrecht and, later, 
travelling in Germany. But there are two events 
in the personal life of Wilkes which it is necessary 
to mention, if we are to understand the relations 
between the two men when they were reestablished 
at the beginning of the following year. Wilkes had 
fallen in love with an Italian courtesan, named 
Gertrude Corradini, and had lived with her for a 
long time in Paris. At the end of the year 1764 
they separated, Corradini travelling in state (at 
Wilkes's expense) to her home in Italy, where he 
was planning to join her in January. The journey 
of the pair of them across France and Italy savours 
a little of flight and pursuit — a relation between 
them which presently became obvious. But, 
though Wilkes had given himself over to pleasure, 
he was far from happy. He had expected to have 
the companionship, during the winter, of his de- 
voted friend, the poet Churchill; and, indeed, 
Churchill had actually joined him at Boulogne in 
the previous October. But he had been almost 



BOSWELL AND WILKES 73 

immediately attacked by a fever, and had lived 
but a few days. Perhaps no event in the life of 
Wilkes touched him more deeply than this. In 
so far as his nature was capable of love, he had 
loved Churchill, and the loss of him he never ceased 
to lament. 

When, therefore, Wilkes arrived in Turin, early 
in the month of January, he was still cast down by 
his recent bereavement ; he was, furthermore, in a 
state of intense annoyance at his mistress. The 
agreement between them had been to meet at 
Turin ; but Corradini, on arrival, had complained 
of rheumatism, and made off, leaving word for 
Wilkes that she had gone on to Bologna. At this 
moment, luck brought James Boswell also to 
Turin. He at once made overtures to Wilkes by 
dispatching a letter to him in which he proposed 
that they should dine together. This is the first 
of the letters of Boswell addressed to Wilkes that 
has come down to us, and it is, for several reasons, 
a curious document. Its tone of mingled good 
fellowship and impudence is a plain revelation of 
Boswell's manner when with Wilkes, and is in the 
most surprising and significant contrast to the 
attitude of cringing servility which he is commonly 
supposed to have adopted. But the letter piques 
our interest for a totally different reason. The 
writing on one half of the page has, unfortunately, 



74 YOUNG BOSWELL 

been obliterated. The letter, which is in the 
British Museum, is one of a group deposited there 
with other important papers of John Wilkes. The 
packet of Boswell's letters has at some time or 
other been wetted, and the top sheets seriously in- 
jured. All that can be read of the first page is 
this : — 

Sir, 

I am to 
is now in Turin, 
my monarchical 
As a Scotsman 
As a Freind I 
a companion I lo 
it is not decent fo 
him : yet I wish 
I shall be alone, 
dinner upon my ta 
If Mr. Wilkes chus 
Guest, I shall by 
it. I may venture 
be very wellcome, 
him a feast of mo 
and choice Conversa 
Bos 
Turin, 10 January 1765. 

When I first came across this letter, I was re- 
minded of the fragmentary document in "Monte 
Cristo" that assisted Edmond Dantes in his escape 



BOSWELL AND WILKES 75 

from the Chateau d'If. By dint of measuring 
lines, and holding the sheet up to the light to study 
the position of vague upward strokes of otherwise 
obliterated words, it is possible to guess at the half- 
lines that the water has washed away, and to re- 
construct a letter which, if not a reliable repro- 
duction of the original, at least makes clear sense. 
I think we may take it as a fairly close approxima- 
tion to the general drift of the original. 

Sir, 

I am told that Mr. Wilkes 
is now in Turin. I assure you that 
my monarchical soul is roused. 
As a Scotsman, I abhor him. 
As a Freind, I value him. As 
a companion I love him, and altho 
it is not decent for me to ask him, 
yet I wish much to see him. 
I shall be alone this evening, with 
dinner upon my table for two. 
If Mr. Wilkes chuses to be my 
Guest, I shall by no means resent 
it. I may venture to add that he will 
be very wellcome, and to promise 
him a feast of most excellent wine 
and choice Conversation. 

^ ^ BoSWELL. 

Turin, 10 January, 1765. 

Wilkes, it would appear, declined this invitation. 
The letter which follows this one is also frag- 



76 YOUNG BOSWELL 

mentary ; but in this case it is the upper half of the 
page which has been obHterated ; we have, however, 
two or three complete sentences, which enable us, 
despite the absence of a date, to divine its relation 
to the preceding one. It is clear that Boswell had 
not heard of the death of Churchill, and that 
Wilkes, in replying to the letter we have tried to 
reconstruct above, spoke of it. It would appear 
that he used his grief as an excuse for declining 
Boswell's invitation; at any rate, there was some 
obstacle to their meeting, for the next letter reads : 

. . . Churchill's death fills me with generous sym- 
pathy with you. Is it not well that you pause and 
reflect a little? Might we not have an interview and 
continue the conversation on the immateriality of the 
soul which you had with my countryman Baxter many 
years ago at Brussels ? 

To men of philosophical minds there are surely 
moments in which they set aside their nation, their . . . 

The water has destroyed for ever James Boswell's 
fine sentiment on the death of Churchill ; but the 
next sentences are a priceless revelation of his 
typical method of approach : — 

John Wilkes, the fiery Whig, would despise this senti- 
ment. John Wilkes the gay profligate, would laugh at 
it. But John Wilkes the philosopher will feel it and 
will love it. 



BOSWELL AND WILKES 77 

You have no objection to sitting up a little late. Per- 
haps you may come to me tonight. I hope at any rate 
you will dine with me tomorrow. 

James Boswell is not easily put down. You may 
not care to revel with him, because your heart is 
heavy with grief ; but surely, surely, you will wish 
to comfort yourself by discussing the immortality 
of the soul. Let philosophy replace hilarity. You 
once told Boswell of your conversation with Baxter 
years ago, at Spa, on this very theme. Now is the 
time to continue it ! Surely it is well for us revel- 
lers to pause and reflect a little. In any case, the 
important business is that James Boswell should 
get into the presence of Wilkes. — And so, indeed, 
he did, either at Turin or some more southerly 
town. 

The next letter of BoswelFs is dated March 2, 
and is written in Latin, from Baise. The tone of 
it makes clear that cordial relations between the 
two are now permanently established. Their in- 
timacy has progressed to the use of nicknames : 
Wilkes, because of his disloyalty to his King, is 
"Brutus," and Boswell is the "avenger of Caesar." 
There has been much political brawling (jurgia) 
between them, much fine talk about literature and 
about Wilkes's proposed edition, with notes, of the 
poems of Churchill, whose literary executor he 
was. There has been also much "classical" con- 



78 YOUNG BOSWELL 

versation, — whence this Latin letter, — not to 
mention much joviality over the wine-bottle. But, 
best of all, Wilkes has promised to join Bos well in 
Naples — so much had been extracted from him 
at Rome, where the association, begun at Turin, 
had been continued. And now Boswell, after a 
long and jolting journey over the Appian Way, 
has reached Naples, — "dead Parthenope's fair 
tomb, " — and, for some reason, had gone on to Baise. 

Csesaris ultor Brutum in exilio salutat. Hesterna 
nocte Parthenopen hanc attigi. Membra fere fractus 
dura ista Appia, quamvis tardissimus et etiam quoda- 
modo serpens processus sum. 

Egregium sane tempus invenio Baiis ; caelum luridum, 
precellam fortem, pluvium continuum. Tali tempore 
non mirandum si Anglus antiquus f une se suspenderet ; 
sed pauper Scotus, si victum tantum habet, omni 
tempore contentus vivit. 

Precor mihi scire facias quando consortio tuo frui 
possim ; non interest quo prsebente domum, nam apud 
te vel apud me vinum et hilaritas erunt. Ne oblivis- 
caris promissi quod mihi Romae dedisti, nos multum 
simul fore Napoli. Summam spero voluptatem legendo 
notas tuas acres in poemata acria Churchilli, qui nunc 
cum Juvenale est. Musis amicus politica jurgia tradam 
ventis. Latinam linguam scribere baud assuetus, 
tamen in hac regione classica experiri volui. Excuses 
et valeas. 

Die 20 Martii, 
Anno 1765. 



BOSWELL AND WILKES 79 

Wilkes was already in Naples. He had had the 
same jolting in getting there that had almost 
demolished the limbs of Boswell. The pavement 
of the Appian Way, he tells his daughter, was " in- 
tolerably hard, and so slippery that the horses were 
continually coming down on their knees." There 
were bad holes even in the road from Capua to 
Naples. Wilkes's promise to be with Boswell was 
redeemed. Together they ascended Vesuvius. 
Although a "clear cold day," the sixteenth of 
March, was chosen for the expedition, they sacri- 
ficed their skin to the blazing sun and the burning 
heat of volcanic ashes. According to Wilkes's 
account, he, for his part, was pushed and pulled to 
the summit by the efforts of five men ; nor can we 
believe that our friend Boswell, who was of no 
athletic frame and was given to self-indulgence, 
acquitted himself with more distinction. From 
Wilkes's vivid account of the crater, it is easy to 
imagine the pair of them, prone on their bellies and 
suffocated by the smoke, peering down the crater 
at the ragged mountains of yellow sulphur below. 
When the wind swept the smoke towards them, 
they were obliged "hastily to retire," and de- 
scended in great discomfort, almost up to the 
knees in ashes. Boswell never forgot this exploit, 
and decades later, when writing to Wilkes, referred 
to himself as "your Vesuvius fellow-traveller." 



80 YOUNG BOSWELL 

Such experiences, indeed, serve to draw men 
together ; old associations of this kind are the best 
antidote to estrangement. James Boswell, by rea- 
son of his association with Wilkes in a foreign 
land, thus completed his conquest of the great man 
by establishing a common fund of memories on 
which they might draw in future. "The many 
pleasant hours which we passed together at 
Naples," wrote Boswell on his return, a month 
later, to Rome, "shall never be lost." — "I shall 
never forget your civilities to me," Wilkes had told 
the young man at parting. "You are engraven 
upon my heart." 

Boswell and Wilkes did not meet again upon the 
Continent. The younger man returned to Rome, 
to resume his studies of antiquities ; but he did not 
neglect the friendship which had been so happily 
begun. Wilkes had agreed to correspond with 
him, and Boswell was not the man to permit him 
to treat that promise lightly. He wrote Wilkes 
two long letters from Rome, and one from Terni. 
The contents of these letters afford us a notion of 
the kind of conversation that went on between the 
two, much of which was, plainly, political banter. 
Wilkes was amazed, and he was delighted — who 
can doubt it ? — with the effrontery of a young 
man who dared to make him the subject of a 
satirical poem and to instruct him with regard to 



BOSWELL AND WILKES 81 

the amiable character of his ancient enemy, Lord 
Bute. 

"Some days ago," he writes to Wilkes from 
Rome, "nothing would serve me but to write you 
an Heroic Epistle." Boswell was ever vaguely 
ambitious to produce satiric verse, and in the 
course of his life published a number of such pieces, 
besides leaving behind him a large quantity of 
verse in MS., apparently designed for publication. 
There is no doubt that he planned to print the 
"Epistle to Wilkes" if he could bring himself to 
finish it, not so much, perhaps, for its poetic value, 
as for indubitable evidence to the British public 
that he was now intimate with the notorious 
politician in exile. In a later letter he told Wilkes 
that he had had a flow of spirits, in which he had 
dashed off some hundred and fifty lines of the 
Epistle. It is to be hoped that this continuation 
was sprightlier than the following specimen, which 
he submitted to Wilkes : — 

To thee, gay Wilkes, tho' outlaw'd, still as gay. 
As when Dan Armstrong wrote his German "Day," 
Another Scot now sends his English rhymes ; 
Spite of the Whiggish broils which mark our times ; 
Spite of the rude North-Briton's factious rage, 
And all th' abuse of thy imputed page. 

Armstrong and Wilkes had once quarrelled over 
a poem of the former's, entitled "Day," which the 



82 YOUNG BOSWELL 

Scottish poet, then resident in Germany, had en- 
trusted to Wilkes for publication, and in which 
Wilkes had ventured to make certain alterations. 
But there was no danger of a quarrel between the 
demagogue and his new poet. Wilkes chuckled 
at the lines, and told his young friend to go ahead 
with the verses. He was amused at Boswell's 
Toryism, and apparently enjoyed his invectives, 
which he deliberately elicited for the genial pur- 
pose of laughing at them. 

"You may think as you please," Boswell writes, 
"but I have no small pride in being able to write 
to you with this gay good humour, for I do, in my 
conscience, believe you to be an enemy to the true 
old British Constitution, and to the order and 
happiness of society. That is to say, I believe you 
to be a very Whig and a very libertine.'* 

When you are corresponding with an eccentric 
plain-dealer like this, you must give yourself over 
either to indignation or to amusement; the only 
alternative is to mend your ways. Wilkes, who 
was himself a plain-dealer, enjoyed this turning of 
the tables, and so the friendship continued. 

But it was destined to be very seriously inter- 
rupted by the tour to Corsica. Letters, it is true, 
were exchanged between them after Boswell's 
return from the island. Wilkes wrote with true 
sympathy on the occasion of the death of Boswell's 



BOSWELL AND WILKES 83 

mother, and Boswell invited Wilkes to visit him 
at Auchinleck ; but there was no real intimacy be- 
tween them for many years afterwards. This was 
probably due in part to Boswell's growing friend- 
ship with Johnson. In the "Life," Boswell, speak- 
ing of his return from the Continent, remarks : "I 
having mentioned that I had passed some time with 
Rousseau in his wild retreat, and having quoted 
some remark made by Mr. Wilkes, with whom I 
had spent many pleasant hours in Italy, John- 
son said (sarcastically), *It seems. Sir, you have 
kept very good company abroad, Rousseau and 
Wilkes !'" Boswell was not yet sufficiently sure of 
himself and Johnson to propose bringing the two 
together. And so they drifted apart. 

In the year 1774, Wilkes's amazing political 
fortunes elevated him to the office of Lord Mayor 
of London. Boswell at once renewed the old 
associations. He addressed him as "My Lord" 
(to Wilkes's express disgust), and they were clas- 
sical and gay, as in their Italian days. Wilkes gave 
Boswell a special invitation to the great dinner 
in the Mansion House on Easter Tuesday, 1775. 
This entertainment, as was fitting when a popular 
idol had become chief magistrate of the city, sur- 
passed in magnificence all former events of the 
sort. The press-cuttings preserved at the Guild- 
hall give the following account of it : — 



84 YOUNG BOSWELL 

In the Egj^tian Hall, where the company dined, was 
a beautiful piece, painted in an inimitable taste, which, 
it is said, represented the triumph of Bacchus and 
Ariadne, or love united with wine. Besides the usual 
profusion of wines and eatables, which were remarkably 
good in their kind, and set off in the greatest elegance, 
as well as much warmer than commonly is the case at 
those great dinners, the guests were here presented with 
another novelty, which had a most pleasing effect, 
many of Mr. Cox's pieces of mechanism, from the 
Museum, all in full tune, and which continued their 
musical movements, during the greatest part of the 
dinner. The dessert was in the same pleasing style, at 
once great and elegant. In the ball-room taste and 
magnificence prevailed. 

Among the "elegant and orderly company" is 
found the name of Mr. Boswell, and, later, this 
highly characteristic anecdote, which bears on its 
face the marks of its authenticity : — 

At dinner Mr. Boswell, who had taken care to secure 
good room, seeing Mr. Colman in want of a place, 
called to him, and gave him one beside himself, saying, 
" See what it is to have a Scotchman for your friend at 
Mr. Wilkes's table." A little time after there came a 
foreign waiter with something; Mr. Boswell talked to 
him in German, upon which Mr. Colman wittily ob- 
served, **I have certainly mistaken the place to-day. I 
thought I was at the Mansion House, but I must surely 
be at St. James's, for here are nothing but Germans 
and Scots." 



BOSWELL AND WILKES 85 

Boswell made the most of his new opportunities, 
promised Miss Wilkes (now the Lady Mayoress) 
a copy of the Glasgow edition of the poems of Gray, 
and the Lord Mayor a present of some black game, 
and, moreover, requested the renewal of their 
correspondence. 

It is long since I enjoyed the pleasure of your cor- 
respondence. Will you renew it with me now? I 
should value, as curiosities of the first rate, lively sallies 
from a Lord Mayor of London, such as those from Mr. 
Wilkes which are preserved in my cabinet. 

But no letters appear to have been written as a 
result of this request. 

Boswell's most remarkable exploit with Wilkes 
occurred the next year : it consisted, as all the 
world knows, in bringing the demagogue and Dr. 
Johnson together at dinner at Mr. Dilly's. The 
success of this social experiment, which would have 
taxed the skill of the most accomplished dowager 
in London, was a source of permanent satisfaction 
to Boswell, who prefaces his description of it in the 
"Life" with the proud words, *'Pars magna fui." 
The description constitutes perhaps the most 
famous page in that famous book. It has delighted 
the world of readers ever since; and that delight 
should be taken as a measure of the colour and 
excitement which James Boswell knew how to 
introduce into the conventional life in which he 



86 YOUNG BOSWELL 

moved. He was an irritant in a group which is 
Ukely to move sluggishly, according to dull prece- 
dent, avoiding novelties and revisions of judgment. 

Everybody, I repeat, knows the story of the 
Wilkes dinner, and many know the story of its 
successor, which occurred jBve years later at the 
same place; but what few people know is that 
Boswell proposed, and almost succeeded in bring- 
ing about, a third meeting. He was not the man 
to halt in the course that he was running. It was 
next his ambition to persuade Dr. Johnson to go 
to dinner at Wilkes's own house. To see Johnson 
under the roof of the man who had been his bitter 
antagonist — to bring Mercury and Ursa Major 
into conjunction — that would be a constellation 
worth observing! What a page for the *'Life of 
Johnson" ! 

It is possible that the invitation which Wilkes 
issued to Johnson was the result of a jest or a 
wager. In May, 1783, Boswell undertook to 
negotiate for a dinner of his old friends, John and 
Charles Dilly, at the home of Wilkes. He did so 
in a highly characteristic epistle, in which he dis- 
tributed titles with a free hand, complimented Miss 
Wilkes, reminded her father that, if he should ever 
become a widower, he might yet sue for her hand, 
and so become Wilkes's son-in-law, introduced the 
inevitable quotation from Horace and the equally 



BOSWELL AND WILKES 87 

inevitable jest on Wilkes's ugly face. It would be 
difficult to find a more characteristic letter, yet it 
covers barely a single page in Boswell's generous 
hand. It is necessary to add that the High Sher- 
iff of Bedford is Mr. John Dilly, the Lord Cham- 
berlain of London is Wilkes, and the Vesuvius 
traveller, of course, Boswell himself. 

General Paoli*s 
South Audley Street, 12 May. 
Dear Sir, — 

As I undertook to be the negociator of the dinner at 
your house — the High Sheriff of Bedfordshire, his 
brother Mr. Charles Dilly, and an old Vesuvius fellow- 
traveller — I beg to know if next Sunday, the 18th will 
be convenient for the Chamberlain of London. This 
is omnia magna loquens. My best compliments to Miss 
Wilkes. She knows my conditional threatening that 
you should have been mon beau pere. Ah qu'il est beau ! 
Vale et me ama. 

James Boswell. 
At this dinner — if it took place as planned — 
there were present three of the principals who had 
appeared at the dinner when Johnson was first 
presented to Wilkes, and it would be but natural 
for the conversation to turn upon that event. Be 
this as it may, on the following Wednesday Bos- 
well wrote to Wilkes : — 

Mr. Boswell finds that it would not be unpleasant 
to Dr. Johnson to dine at Mr. Wilkes's. The thing 



88 YOUNG BOSWELL 

would be so curiously benignant, it were a pity it should 
not take place. Nobody but Mr. Boswell should be 
asked to meet the Dr. Mr. Boswell goes for Scotland 
Friday the 30th. If then a card were sent to the Dr. 
for Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday without delay, 
it is to be hoped he would be fixed, and notice will be 
sent to Mr. Boswell. 

But Johnson, capricious as a prima donna (or an 
heiress in a post-chaise), changed his mind. He 
would not dine with Wilkes. He had engagements. 
In a curt note, "Mr. Johnson returns thanks to 
Mr. and Miss Wilkes for their kind invitation, but 
he is engaged for Tuesday to Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
and for Wednesday to Mr. Paradise," he put an 
end to the negotiations. This note was made the 
more insulting by being handed to Boswell for 
transmission to Wilkes. It is possible that Bos- 
well had difficulty in obtaining even this formal 
word. There was almost certainly a scene. The 
"Life" is silent on the entire matter, and there is 
no entry for May 24, the date of Johnson's note. 
Those who, like Boswell, love the record of life as 
it actually passed, will regret his silence on this 
subject; but they will regret still more that the 
dinner in Wilkes's house did not occur. That loss 
is the world's. 

Of Boswell's later relations with Wilkes there is 
but little to record. There are references to other 



BOSWELL AND WILKES 89 

dinners (after Johnson's death) at Dilly's and at 
Wilkes's house in Kensington Gore, where, no 
doubt, Boswell met Wilkes's mistress. The letters 
in reference to them have the same ring as the 
earliest ones, — "Pray let us meet oftener," — the 
same proposal that Wilkes should make an amende 
honorable to the Scots. There is, unhappily, a 
reference to money which Boswell has borrowed of 
Wilkes. And, last of all, six weeks after the ap- 
pearance of the "Life of Johnson," when Wilkes 
was sixty-four years old, a note — indeed, a mere 
scrap — which well reveals Boswell's undying 
passion for written evidence, as well as his instinct 
for collecting. 

June 25. 
My dear Sir, — 

You said to me yesterday of my magnum opus, " It 
is a wonderful book." Do confirm this to me, so as I 
may have your testimonium in my archives at Auchin- 
leck. I trust we shall meet while you are in town. 
Every most truly yours, 

James Boswell. 

The cabinet at Auchinleck ! What would one 
not have given to inspect it.^^ Within it were 
treasured the letters which Boswell had received 
from the Great — letters from Johnson, from 
Rousseau, from David Hume, from Paoli, from 
Burke, from Garrick, from Wilkes, and a thousand 



90 YOUNG BOSWELL 

others. Moreover, there were deposited the notes 
of his conversations and his manifold memorabiha 
— a treasure of documents for the hfe of the times. 
The collection must have been shown to many a 
visitor to Auchinleck in the latter days ; but lit- 
erary visitors, alas, were few; and none has re- 
corded any description of it. When it perished, 
there disappeared for ever materials out of which 
Boswell, had he lived, might have woven the story 
of his association with Wilkes. Compared with 
the *'Life of Johnson" such a story would have 
been a mere sketch; but it would have been a 
sketch from a master-hand. There would have 
been in it, moreover, an elan, a hilarity, a love of 
mischief and impudence, that could not, by the 
nature of Boswell's relations with Johnson, appear 
in the great "Life." There would have been, in 
short, more fun. But, because Boswell was a 
genius, there would have been something more — 
a vivid characterisation of Wilkes, done by a man 
who loved him but had no illusions about him, a 
man who had penetrated into the inmost secrets 
of his life, yet had remained unaffected by his 
political views. It might not have been a defini- 
tive study of eighteenth-century radicalism, but it 
would have been Wilkes. His name would have 
been in no danger of disappearing from the minds 
of men. The decree of fate (and Hogarth), by 



BOSWELL AND WILKES 91 

which his demagogy has been subtly emphasised in 
the minds and memories of men, might then have 
been altered by the work of a greater artist than 
Hogarth, and John Wilkes, the gay and fascinating 
John Wilkes, might have been remembered for 
something other than the evil that he did. 



CHAPTER V 

BOSWELL AND HIS ELDERS: LORD AUCHINLECK 
SIR ALEXANDER DICK, GENERAL PAOLI 

BoswELL was one of those unusual young per- 
sons who deHberately and by preference seek out 
the companionship of men twice their age. His 
three most celebrated friends, Wilkes, General 
Paoli, and Samuel Johnson, were, respectively, 
thirteen, fifteen, and thirty-one years older than 
he. His two favourite friends in Scotland, Sir 
David Dalrymple (Lord Hailes) and Sir Alexander 
Dick, were, respectively, fourteen and thirty-seven 
years older than he. Association with younger 
men he found vivacious but profitless ; their con- 
versation was not such as a man would care to 
record. In his friendship with older men there was 
always an attempt to gain, as it were at second- 
hand, all the treasures of a long experience. When 
the atmosphere became too rarefied, he could al- 
ways sink back again to the more primitive type 
of comradeship. In one of his early letters to Sir 
David, soon after the acquaintance with Johnson 
had begun, Boswell wrote : — 

I must own to you that I have for some time past 
been in a miserable unsettled way, and been connected 



BOSWELL AND HIS ELDERS 93 

with people of shallow parts, altho' agreeably vivacious. 
But I find a flash of merriment a poor equivalent for 
internal comfort. I thank God that I have got ac- 
quainted with Mr. Johnson. He has done me infinite 
service. He has assisted me to obtain peace of mind. 

We should all do well, I think, to rid our minds 
of the familiar conception of Boswell as lost in an 
ecstasy of hero-worship and breathless with adula- 
tion ; and to think of him, rather, as getting from 
his association with his elders a double portion of 
life, enjoying the fruits of experience without sac- 
rificing the avidity of youth. He was, as it were, 
buying experience in the cheapest market ; and to 
him a full and rich experience of life was the 
summum honum. 

Because of this desire for a varied experience, 
he was ever, when with older men, putting himself 
in an attitude not so much of worship as of inquiry. 
What did the actual experience of life have to say 
in answer to the thousand questions that crowded 
his eager, restless mind.'* If his elders had at- 
tained serenity, it must have been by finding some 
answer to these thousand disturbing questions. 
If not, whence rose their peace of mind.'* Thus 
Boswell habitually teased Johnson on the subject 
of the freedom of the will, not, I think, because he 
conceived of him as a greater philosopher than any 
who had ever touched on the subject, but because, 



94 YOUNG BOSWELL 

seeing Johnson's comparative mastery of the busi- 
ness of Hving, he was most desirous of knowing 
what solution of the problem had appealed to him 
as acceptable. K one could actually extract from 
association with his elders a body of philosophy, 
tested by personal experience and illustrated by 
personal anecdote, what an education it would be ! 
He has himself made the matter clear, in his 
"Tour to Corsica": — 

The contemplation of such a character [as Paoli], 
really existing, was of more service to me than all I had 
been able to draw from books, from conversation, or 
from the exertions of my own mind. I had often 
enough formed the idea of a man continually such as I 
could conceive in my best moments. But this idea 
appeared like the ideas we are taught in the schools to 
form of things which may exist, but do not ; of seas of 
milk and ships of amber. But I saw my highest idea 
realised in Paoli. It was impossible for me, speculate 
as I pleased, to have a little opinion of human nature in 
him. 

For this reason, again, he was perpetually seek- 
ing advice. Indeed, the seeking of advice became 
with Boswell, as it does with many of the young, 
what is euphemistically termed a "habit." De- 
manding advice of one's elders is not infrequently 
merely a means of calling attention to oneself. 
The seeker presents himself, alternately, in the 
actual and the ideal role, and his self-love is flat- 



BOSWELL AND HIS ELDERS 95 

tered. If he succeeds in getting his advice, he has 
succeeded in making himself an object of concern 
to the elder generation. It is, in short, a harmless 
kind of vanity. It will be recalled that Boswell par- 
doned the envoy at Berlin for not giving the advice 
which he wanted, adding, "To enter into a detail of 
the little circumstances which compose the felicity 
of another is what a man of any genius can hardly 
submit to." Nevertheless, it was such a compre- 
hension as that which Boswell demanded and was 
always hoping to get. On his own side, he had 
much to ofiFer in return. Sheer appreciation, for 
example. Is not age for ever fretting because 
youth will not listen to its counsels ? Here was a 
youth eager to listen. And then he could keep age 
in touch with a younger generation, if age had 
broadmindedness enough to let him upset its con- 
servatism and introduce colour and movement 
into life. One might tour the Seven Provinces, 
or the farthest Hebrides, in company with youth ; 
one might dine with Jack Wilkes, or attempt to 
scrape acquaintance with the King of Sweden. 
Life is not over at sixty. 

It is clear that this attitude is not merely filial, 
dutiful, submissive. It is not the posture of obedi- 
ent son in the presence of revered father. In a 
word, it is not hero-worship. There is too much 
in it of give-and-take, too much that originates 



96 YOUNG BOSWELL 

with the younger party to the contract. Of his 
own father Boswell never succeeded in making a 
companion. Perhaps he never tried. At any 
rate, long before we know them with any degree 
of intimacy, they had begun to draw apart ; and it 
is Hkely that the dissimilarity of their natures had 
prevented them, from the beginning, from achiev- 
ing any genuine intimacy or comradeship. Bos- 
well always respected Lord Auchinleck, and in 
those rare moments when his father gave him 
plenty of rein, he loved him; but in general the 
father was dour. He was totally unfitted to under- 
stand or make allowance for the tastes and habits 
of his son James. By what jest of fate had he, 
the hard-headed, sharp-tongued, contentious Cal- 
vinist judge, begotten this runagate.'^ By what 
methods could he hope to sober the creature and 
fasten his ever wayward thoughts on the Scots law, 
so that he might rise in time to the bench, as his 
father had done, and reign worthily over Auchin- 
leck.'^ But it was of no use. "Jamie" had gone 
"clean gyte.'* How could the thrifty father be 
expected to realise that his son's love of social life 
would ever be of more worth to the world than the 
earnest application to duty of the most industrious 
apprentice that ever lived ? 

As for "Jamie," his instinctive affection was 
gradually extinguished by the father's upbraiding. 



BOSWELL AND HIS ELDERS 97 

Constant fretting at the young will in time wear 
away all affection ; confidence and mutual respect 
disappear long before. "My lord," said the son, 
"was solid and composed, Boswell was light and 
restless." The younger man felt that he was 
treated like a boy (as, no doubt, he was) ; and even 
after he was married and independent, he was fain 
to consume a large amount of strong beer in order 
to get through the ordeal of a visit in his father's 
home — all of which could not have tended to 
allay the ever-rising hostility between them. 

They differed sharply over the entail of the 
estate of Auchinleck, Boswell wishing to confine 
the succession to the male heirs. The question 
was of no practical importance, for there was no 
lack of male heirs ; but it none the less increased the 
friction between them. They were better off when 
they were far apart. A visit to London meant to 
Boswell, among other things, escape from a carping 
father. 

And yet the father made a distinct appeal to the 
son. He had lost his son's heart, but fascinated 
his creative imagination. Boswell never ceased 
to realise that Lord Auchinleck was remarkably 
good "material." To adopt the phraseology of 
a later century, the old gentleman "belonged in a 
novel." His keen wits and his strong national 
prejudices flowered naturally into racy humour; 



98 YOUNG BOSWELL 

he was chock-full of anecdote; although a judge 
and an aristocrat, he had the vivid speech and the 
shrewd observation of a man who has learned from 
Nature and not from books. But Lord Auchin- 
leck, though a highly-educated man and a devoted, 
if not pedantic, student of the classics, had never 
lost his mother wit. One thing at least James Bos- 
well inherited from his father, his love of a good 
story. He filled the pages of his Commonplace 
Book with his father's vivacious anecdotes, and in 
so doing produced the best possible portrait of 
him. It is odd that such perfect artistic sympathy 
should exhibit itself after the decay of all filial 
devotion. It is the triumph of art over discord. 

Of certain of James's associates the old gentle- 
man did not disapprove. He liked Sir David, and 
listened to his intercessions on the son's behalf. 
He approved of Sir Alexander Dick. Neither of 
these gentlemen would take James far from home 
or distract his attention from the charms of the 
Scots law. Sir Alexander, in particular, was a 
safe associate. He was, to be sure, thirty-seven 
years older than James, but James had a fondness 
for older men, and a *'way" with them, if only 
they would give him a chance. 

Sir Alexander was now the head of the Dick 
family and residing at Prestonfield, or Priestfield 



BOSWELL AND HIS ELDERS 99 

Parks, the family estate at the foot of Arthur's 
Seat, near Edinburgh. He was a man of classical 
learning, who liked to fancy that there was some- 
thing Horatian in his peaceful retirement into rural 
life. He wrote verses and cultivated the soil, in 
imitation of Vergil's "Georgics," and threw open 
his hospitable doors to all comers. He told Boswell 
that he remembered to have had a thousand people 
in a year to dine at his house. He was a gracious 
gentleman, who loved men of genius, and was glad 
to cultivate the acquaintance of any who might be 
near Edinburgh. Allan Ramsay and David Hume 
were his intimate friends ; the Bishop of London, 
Alexander Pope, and Benjamin Franklin were 
among his acquaintances. Franklin, with his son, 
visited Prestonfield, probably in the year 1759, 
lingered there some days, and on his return to Eng- 
land, wrote a poem, beginning, "Joys of Preston- 
field, adieu," in which he praised the "beds that 
never bugs molest." Sir Alexander's table fairly 
groaned with food. He once wrote in his diary : ^ 
"Willie's birthday. Mr. James Boswell and the 
India Mr. Boswell, Mrs. Young, etc., etc., all dined 
here, and Mr. Mercer, and danced. We had a fine 
piece of boiled beef and greens, a large turkey, some 
fine chickens, 250 fine asparagus from my hot bed, 

^January 7, 1777. Lady Forbes's Curiosities of a Scots 
Charta Chest, p. 257. 



100 YOUNG BOSWELL 

and a fine pig, — all from the farm and wine from 
the farm (i.e., curran and gooseberry) and Greek 
from the Consul of Leghorn, and claret and port 
and punch and a fine Parmesan cheese, also from 
Leghorn." It is easy to understand why Boswell 
found in Prestonfield the best possible substitute 
for the social joys of London. 

When Boswell went to Italy in the spring of 
1765, Sir Alexander interested himself greatly in 
the trip. He had himself travelled in Holland and 
Italy as a young man, and still had old acquaint- 
ances there who could be of service to Boswell. On 
Christmas Eve, 1764, Boswell wrote to him from 
Geneva a letter asking for introductions to Italian 
men of learning : — 

My plan [he wrotel is to employ my whole time in 
the study of antiquitys and the fine arts, for which I 
shall have such noble opportunitys that I hope to form 
a taste which may contribute to my happiness as long 
as I live. ... I know no man more capable and who 
will be more ready to assist me than you. Sir. 

The letter is particularly valuable because in it 
Boswell announces the route which he intends to 
follow through Italy. His plan was to cross from 
Milan to Venice, then to visit Rome and Naples, 
and afterwards to go to Florence and Genoa. As 
a matter of fact, he seems to have postponed the 



BOSWELL AND HIS ELDERS 101 

visit to Venice till after he had been to Rome and 
Naples — a change of plan which was undoubtedly 
due to a desire to keep close to Wilkes, whom he 
had met in Turin. However, when this letter was 
written, Wilkes was not yet on the horizon; Bos- 
well was still cultivating Rousseau, but he was 
anxious to provide for the associations of the fu- 
ture. "You will oblige me greatly," he continues, 
"if you will recommend me as your friend to some 
learned and ingenious men from whom I may re- 
ceive instruction, and may catch the exquisite 
enthusiasm of true taste. When I come home to 
Scotland, I shall endeavour to make you some re- 
turn by my conversation at your classical villa of 
Prestonfield." 

Sir Alexander did as he was requested, and gave 
Boswell an introduction to Camillo Paderni, the 
Italian scholar and antiquary, who was among the 
earliest explorers of Herculaneum, and was now in 
charge of all the antiquities unearthed in the dis- 
trict. Under his personal escort, Boswell visited 
the ruins. After his return to Rome in May, he 
sent the following description of the visit to Sir 
Alexander : — 

Camillo shewed me the rich store of antiquitys which 
have been found at Herculaneum. He has arranged 
them with great judgment and taste. They fully an- 
swered my expectations. I had not only an oppor- 



102 YOUNG BOSWELL 

tunity of admiring the noble remains of sculpture and 
painting, but viewed with curious satisfaction the im- 
mense variety of every thing for the use of life which, 
as you well say, fairly brings back old time, as it were, 
face to face. One sees by this collection how far the 
ancients had carried every article of convenience, and 
how very similar their ordinary course of living has 
been to that of modern times. I shall not pretend to 
give you a detail of what I saw at Herculaneum, or to 
enter into a discussion of any particulars till I have the 
pleasure of being with you, when we can talk it over 
fully. I need not tell you how much I was charmed 
with the delightfull situation of Naples and with its 
classical environs. I past three weeks there, and em- 
ployed my time to very good purpose. Upon my 
return to Rome, I engaged an antiquary, and went 
through what is called a course of antiquitys, which 
includes also the pictures. I have viewed the noble 
remains of Roman grandeur with venerable enthusiasm, 
and have seen most of the best churches and palaces 
in Rome. I regret, indeed, that my time here is so 
short, that I can have little more than the immediate 
pleasure of seeing the many fine things. To study 
them and to form a correct taste would keep me from 
home much longer than my father's inclination and my 
serious dutys can allow. I have as much feeling as any 
man, and from the remembrance of the treasures of 
Italy, joined to what I have yet to see, I doubt not to 
retain so much taste as never to be idle for want of 
elegant occupation. I must own I have been a little 
dissappointed in Italy. You know what divine ideas 
we form of it, and you know that it does not come up 



BOSWELL AND HIS ELDERS 103 

to them in several respects. However, I shall certainly 
say, meminisse juvabit. 

This is, I think, the longest description which 
Boswell ever wrote of those "sights" which are 
commonly supposed to absorb all the attention 
of tourists; and it is to be feared that the whole 
account was written with a view to pleasing Sir 
Alexander (whose classical enthusiasm was great) 
rather than to expressing actual preferences. "I 
must own I have been a little dissappointed in 
Italy." At the moment when Boswell wrote that 
sentence, he was out of touch with the Great. He 
had left Wilkes a month before in Naples. Months 
were yet to pass before he met Paoli. He was com- 
pelled to content himself with the companionship 
of young Lord Mountstuart (afterwards fourth 
Earl of Bute), who was making the Grand Tour in 
company with a tutor. Boswell and he travelled 
together for a time, journeying northwards from 
Rome.i There was genuine affection between the 
two of them, but nevertheless Lord Mountstuart 
was young — younger, indeed, by four years — 
and Boswell felt the difference in the quality of the 
association. The viscount showed him the letters 
of his father, Lord Bute, and Boswell made what he 
could out of this association at second-hand. He 

* When, a year or so later, Boswell was admitted to the bar, 
he dedicated his thesis for admission to the young viscomit. 



104 YOUNG BOSWELL 

had, at any rate, the pleasure of writing to Wilkes 
that that demagogue had been unfair to Lord Bute. 
It was probably in Rome that Boswell met a 
gentleman by the name of John Dick, cousin to 
Sir Alexander, who was the British Consul at Leg- 
horn. In the course of discussing with him his 
relation to Sir Alexander, Boswell stumbled upon a 
most interesting discovery, fraught with pleasant 
consequences for all concerned. This was no less 
than the fact that Consul Dick was a baronet in 
his own right — a fact of which he had remained 
hitherto in complete ignorance. But Boswell, who 
had interested himself in Sir Alexander Dick as a 
possible subject for a biography, was acquainted 
with the details of the family history, and was 
therefore able to tell Consul Dick facts about his 
own descent of which he himself was ignorant. 
The founder of the line had been a Sir William 
Dick, the first baronet, who had advanced money 
to King Charles I, had become impoverished dur- 
ing the Civil Wars, and had died bankrupt. His 
sons scattered, and trace of the male heir was lost, 
the title descending through a daughter, to whom 
a new patent of baronetcy was issued, with re- 
mainder to her heirs male. Of this title Sir Alex- 
ander Dick was now the heir. But the direct male 
descendant of the first Sir William was the consul. 
This discovery Boswell communicated, not only to 



BOSWELL AND HIS ELDERS 105 

Consul Dick, but, later, to Sir Alexander Dick, 
who had among the family papers, as Bos well knew, 
information regarding the first baronet. 

This whole incident delighted the feudal soul of 
our hero, and on his return to Scotland he at once 
busied himself to prove the succession which he 
had discovered. It was a long process ; but at 
last, in March, 1768, John Dick was "served heir'* 
to his great-great-grandfather, the first baronet, 
and Boswell carried the proofs up to London, to- 
gether with a retour, or official extract of the verdict 
of the jury who heard the proof. Boswell's ac- 
count of the incident, in a letter to Sir Alexander, 
is as follows : — 

On my arrival in London, I put up at the Star and 
Garter in Bond Street, and who do you think happened 
to be in that very house, at a club, but our excellent 
friend, the Consul ? I went to him. He immediately 
came to me. We embraced, and I told him in a hurry 
all the principal circumstances of what had been done 
in Scotland. In the evening I waited upon him to 
supper and was rejoiced at seeing again La Signora 
Consolessa ^ of whom you have heard so much, and have 
formed a very just idea. 

I was a great man, for I came laden with valuable 
things. I produced the retour, which I read in English, 
with an audible voice. I then displayed the magnifi- 
cent Burgess ticket, which was very much admired, and 

^ Lady Dick. 



106 YOUNG BOSWELL 

I give you my word that my heart beat with real glad- 
ness as I read it also aloud. I next displayed the por- 
trait of the venerable Sir William, and then the worthy 
baronet's letter made the bonne louche. You may 
figure me quite at home, and in high spirits investing 
your cousins with their titles! "Sir John Dick, my 
service to you ; Lady Dick, I have the honour to drink 
your Ladyship's good health." So it went, and I know 
not when I was happier. . . . 

What do you think of my Lady Dick's bounty to me ? 
She has this morning made me a present of the most 
elegant sword I ever saw — steel, richly carved and 
embossed, and gilt; in short, quite the pri?-cely sword 
for the Laird of Auchinleck. It will delight you to see 
it when we meet. I will come and strut at Prestonfield. 

The story is continued in the same tone, a week 
later : — 

I think now our worthy friend will be completely 
fixed in his dignity. He was presented to the King as 
knight . . . and both he and Lady Dick have kist hands, 
and are universally acknowledged. I never rested until 
I had the brass plate on his door changed and orna- 
mented with "Sir John Dick." 

Boswell's exertions on behalf of Sir John not 
only brought him a new friend, but also deepened 
the affection between him and Sir Alexander, who 
now had a new realisation of his abilities. The 
proposal to "Boswellise" Sir Alexander was for a 
time taken very seriously, both by the biographer 



BOSWELL AND HIS ELDERS 107 

and the subject. In 1777, Sir Alexander wrote in 
his diary : " Last week Mr. James Boswell, my 
friend, expressed a desire to make a biographical 
account of my life to my 74th year. ... I looked 
over many jottings and [records] of past times, and 
we had some droll interviews, and it becomes, he 
says, very interesting." Sir Alexander turned over 
a bundle of these papers to Boswell, who appears B 
actually to have begun the composition of the 
work, for, in October, 1778, he refers definitely to 
the existence of a "biography." In a letter of this 
date, Boswell, after commending Sir Alexander for # 

the account which he has given of the "public exer- 
tions" of his life, now demands a more intimate 
kind of information. 

Mark your agreeable freinds with whom you have 
corresponded, and refer to the treasure of letters which 
I hope to assist in arranging. I could wish, too, that 
you would mark your studies, and as far as you please 
your opinions in religion and politicks. I value very 
highly the confidence you put in me. . . . Your opin- 
ions, I suppose, you will mark with your own hand. 
For though I beleive them to be truly pious, yet there 
may be a liberality in them which may be misunder- 
stood by your secretary. You are an elder, and, I 
trust, a brother Christian. 

It would seem, from this extract, as if Boswell, 
having wearied of his biographical task, had now 



108 YOUNG BOSWELL 

turned it over to Sir Alexander to complete, with 
the assistance of his daughter and secretary, Miss 
Jessy Dick. If such be the case, there is nothing 
surprising in it, for Boswell, by this time (1778), 
was already absorbed in his Johnsonian plans, and 
had no time for lesser game. 

But there was no interruption of the pleasant 
relations with Sir Alexander Dick. He lived to the 
advanced age of eighty-two. He had known Bos- 
well from boyhood, and throughout their long 
association there had never occurred, so far as we 
know, anything to spoil the pleasure and mu- 
tual respect which they felt for each other. 
There was nothing startling or romantic in their 
friendship, for it was of the ordinary, enduring 
kind which, by reason of its very simplicity, is all 
the more valuable to us as revealing a side of Bos- 
well's character which is generally neglected. 

A more distinguished but no less devoted friend 
than Sir Alexander was Pasquale Paoli, the great 
Corsican patriot. In his relations with Paoli there 
mingled an element of romantic adventure which 
was entirely lacking in the other friendships of 
Boswell's life. For Paoli he felt a reverence that 
he did not display even toward Johnson, since he 
saw in his career — as indeed did all Europe — an 
attempt to vindicate the essential dignity of man- 



BOSWELL AND HIS ELDERS 109 

kind. Out of a group of half-barbarous islanders 
he had undertaken to make a nation imbued with 
the sacred principles of liberty and equality. He 
was a modern ^neas. The eyes of "republicans" 
everywhere were turned towards Paoli. The name 
of a flourishing town in Pennsylvania perpetuates 
the interest which was felt in Paoli and the Cor- 
sicans by the people of America. Rousseau was to 
be the law-giver of the new nation. "Come back 
twenty or thirty years hence," said Paoli to Bos- 
well, "and we'll shew you arts and sciences." Ars 
longa. 

In young, aspiring, or liberty-loving nations 
Boswell was always interested. He was, from the 
first, an American sympathiser. He had strange 
notions about the rights of Ireland. Although a 
Lowlander, he had a passionate devotion to the 
clannish life of the Highlands, and loved to assume 
the style of an "old lord of Scotland." He there- 
fore became deeply interested in the Corsicans, of 
whom he had heard much from the Earl Marischal 
and from Rousseau. He determined to go and see 
for himself the heroic nation in the infant stages 
of its history, and to know and converse with this 
maker of nations. It was easy to persuade the 
emotional Rousseau to give him the necessary in- 
troduction to Paoli. The difficult thing was to 
escape being shot for a spy. 



110 YOUNG BOSWELL 

There exist two accounts of Boswell's first 
meeting with PaoH, which are so neatly supple- 
mentary that it seems strange that they should 
never before have been set down side by side, for 
it is seldom that so interesting a meeting has 
been described by both the "principals." Boswell 
himself wrote the following account of it in his 
"Tour to Corsica" : — 

He asked me what were my commands for him. I 
presented him a letter from Count Rivarola/ and when 
he had read it, I shewed him my letter from Rousseau. 
He was polite, but very reserved. I had stood in the 
presence of many a prince, but I never had such a trial 
as in the presence of Paoli. I have already said that 
he is a great physiognomist. In consequence of his 
being in continual danger from treachery and assassina- 
tion, he has formed a habit of studiously observing 
every new face. For ten minutes we walked backwards 
and forwards through the room, hardly saying a word, 
while he looked at me, with a steadfast, keen, and pene- 
trating eye, as if he searched my very soul. 

This interview was for a while very severe upon me. 
I was much relieved when his reserve wore off, and he 
began to speak more. I then ventured to address him 
with this compliment to the Corsicans, " Sir, I am upon 
my travels, and have lately visited Rome. I am come 
from seeing the ruins of one brave and free people : I 
now see the rise of another." 

He received my compliment very graciously. 

^ The Sardinian Consul at Leghorn. 




Ensraviiiff by V. lloll, (Voni a sketcli !)>• Sir Tlionias Lawienoe 



BOSWELL AND HIS ELDERS 111 

Some years later the incident was recalled by 
Paoli when he was visiting the Thrales at Streat- 
ham, and he gave Fanny Burney the following 
account, which she records in her "Diary" : — 

"He came," he said, "to my country, and he fetched 
me some letter of recommending him ; but I was of the 
belief he might be an impostor and an espy ; for I look 
away from him, and in a moment I look to him again, 
and I behold his tablets. Oh ! he was to the work of 
writing down all I say! Indeed, I was angry. But 
soon I discover he was no impostor and no espy ; and I 
only find I was myself the monster he had come to dis- 
cern. Oh, [Boswell] is a very good man; I love him 
indeed ; so cheerful ! so gay ! so pleasant ! but at the 
first, oh ! I was indeed angry." 

The intimacy which grew up between the two 
men was destined, before many years had passed, 
to be renewed. "Remember that I am your 
friend, and write to me," Paoli had said to Boswell 
as he left him; but he could hardly have con- 
ceived how deep and true that friendship was to 
become, or how serviceable to him and the cause 
which he represented the young Scotsman might 
be. The "Tour to Corsica," to which Boswell add- 
ed as a supplementary title, "Memoirs of Paoli," 
has been a delightful book to generations of readers, 
but its political significance and its practical value 
as Corsican "propaganda" have been forgotten. 



112 YOUNG BOSWELL 

Boswell was almost the first British visitor to the 
island. "Tell them what you have seen here," 
Paoli said, when Boswell asked him what service 
he could render the cause after returning to Eng- 
land. "They will be curious to ask you. A man 
come from Corsica will be like a man come from the 
Antipodes." And so indeed he was. 

Sir George Otto Trevelyan, whose authority no 
one is likely to impugn, after remarking that Bos- 
well wrote ** what is still by far the best account of 
the island that has ever yet been published," goes 
on to speak of his influence in the following way : — 

How real was the effect produced by Boswell's narra- 
tive upon the opinion of his countrymen may be 
gathered from the unwUling testimony of those who 
regretted its influence, and thought little of its author. 
"Foolish as we are," wrote Lord Holland, "we cannot 
be so foolish as to go to war because Mr. Boswell has 
been in Corsica ; and yet, believe me, no better reason 
can be given for siding with the vile inhabitants of one 
of the vilest islands of the world, who are not less free 
than all the rest of their neighbours, and whose island 
will enable the French to do no more harm than they 
may do us at any time from Toulon." Horace Walpole 
credited Boswell with having procured Paoli his pen- 
sion of a thousand a year from the British Exchequer.* 

Besides publishing the "Tour," in which the 
first genuine information about the personality of 
* Early History of Charles James Fox, p. 135. 



BOSWELL AND HIS ELDERS 113 

Paoli was given to the world, Boswell conceived 
the plan of soliciting articles on Corsica from his 
friends and acquaintances, and issuing a volume 
on behalf of the islanders. "British Essays in 
favour of the Brave Corsicans" appeared in 1769, 
the very year of Paoli's defeat by the French, to 
whom the Genoese had finally sold the storm-vexed 
island. In September of this year, Paoli landed 
in England. Walpole, who hated Paoli and Bos- 
well (and, indeed, almost everyone else), wrote in 
his "Memoirs of the Reign of George III," "Paoli's 
character had been so advantageously exaggerated 
by Mr. Boswell's enthusiastic and entertaining 
account of him that the Opposition were ready to 
incorporate him in the list of popular tribunes." 
In that same category Walpole, too, had been will- 
ing to place him until he had the audacity to fight 
against the French. From that time on he became 
to Walpole a contemptible person, worthy of no 
better epithets than an "unheroic fugitive" and a 
"dirty fellow." 

Paoli's reception in England, whither he fled 
after his defeat, was, however, flattering in the 
extreme. Boswell's account of it (here printed for 
the first time) is found in a letter to Sir Alexander 
Dick: — 

Our illustrious chief has been received here with the 
greatest honour. The King desired to see him pri- 



BRITISH ESSAYS 

IN FAVOUR OF THE 

Brave Corsicans: 

BY 
SEVERAL HANDS. 

COLLECTED amo PUBLISHED 

By JAMES BOSWELL, Esc^: 



In medium mors omnts abit, pent obruta virtus. 
Kos in confpicua focils, hoftique carina 
Conftituere Dei, Prxbebunt xquora teftes, 
PnebebuDt terrxj fummis dabit infula faxis. 

LUCAK*. 



LONDON: 

Printed for Edward and Charles Dilly^ 

in the poultry. 

mdcclxix. 



BOSWELL AND HIS ELDERS 115 

vately at the Queen's palace, where he went accordingly, 
and was a long time alone with his Majesty, who ex- 
pressed himself in the most agreable manner as to 
Corsica. 

I must tell you an anecdote which you will like. 
The King said, "I have read Boswell's book, which is 
well written [scritto con spirito]. May I depend upon 
it as an authentic account?" The General answered, 
"Your Majesty may be assured that every thing in 
that book is true, except the compliments which Mr. 
Bos well has been pleased to pay to his friend." 

As for the later relations of Boswell and Paoli, 
are they not written in the "Life of Johnson".? 
If there be truth in that record, Paoli's affection 
for his eccentric young friend never wavered ; it 
was apparently never necessary for Boswell to 
humour Paoli, and there were no storms of passion 
to endure, such as mark the more famous associa- 
tion of Boswell's life. For many years — until, 
indeed, Boswell came to reside in London in 1786 
— General Paoli's house in South Audley Street 
was his headquarters during his London holiday. 
And who can doubt that, despite repeated fits of 
gloom, his presence there was grateful ; for he came 
always as a harbinger of social joys, a bringer of 
new things, a perpetual enemy of inertia and same- 
ness. To the sons and daughters of respectability 
his presence was no doubt an offence; but to his 
friends, who had learned to love him for his very 



116 YOUNG BOSWELL 

oddities, his presence was a promise of gaiety and 
social converse, the very "nights and suppers of 
the gods" once more, brightening the workaday 
world. 



CHAPTER VI 

IN LOVE 

Perhaps in Vanity Fair there are no better satires than 
letters . . . Vows, love, promises, confidences, gratitude, 
how queerly they read after a while ! There ought to be a 
law in Vanity Fair ordering the destruction of every written 
document (except receipted tradesmen's bills) after a certain 
brief and proper interval. — Thackeray. 

In all the varied business of living there Is per- 
haps no matter which must be conducted more 
strictly according to rule and precedent than the 
business of wooing a wife. There is a recognised 
way of getting the thing accomplished (based, no 
doubt, on the Instinct and experience of the race), 
and brave Is the man who dares to adopt any 
other. "All the world loves a lover" — If he 
observes the conventions of the game; but If he 
does not, the world pours out upon the unfor- 
tunate creature the contempt which it always feels 
for those who do not accept Its own methods. 

One of these Is furtiveness. There must be 
something clandestine about the first stages. If 
not all stages, of the process. Courtship is a kind 
of theft, and the amorous pair continue the policy 
of stealth long after their secret Is known to the 
world. Indeed, the public demands It. If you 



118 YOUNG BOSWELL 

feel the impulse to tell the story of your passion to 
a friend at Piccadilly Circus, you must refrain, 
even though he be the friend of your bosom. If 
you desire to print the verses which you have ad- 
dressed to the lady of your choice, you must re- 
mind yourself that it is not done. Let the verses 
be discovered in the secret drawer of the escritoire 
after your death, and the public will be glad to 
read them. 

Again, you must not seek advice. You may 
have the counsels of the world on every subject 
but this ; but unless you are willing to be dubbed 
a fool, you must go unaided to meet this most 
momentous issue of life. Your friends, to be sure, 
will be the first to criticise you for not having some- 
how divined (and followed) the advice which they 
could not and would not give ; but to this criticism 
you must be deaf. It is true that, if you care at 
all for your friends, the introduction of a new per- 
son into your old relationships may have conse- 
quences of the gravest importance; but to all 
these you must be blind. 

Finally, you must be sure of yom-self : you are 
not permitted to be in doubt whether or not the 
emotions you are experiencing may be true love or 
not. You may be wrong, but you must not doubt. 
If you finally wake to the realisation that you are, 
and have been, wrong, you may try again; but 



IN LOVE 119 

again you are not permitted to waver. You may 
perhaps be of so happy a temperament that a thou- 
sand ladies seem to you worthy of your love and 
capable of making you happy ; but this view you 
must conceal as a heresy. The prize which you 
draw must make all other drawings seem blank; 
you must not scan and compare the blessings of 
other men. You may let men know of your dis- 
illusion or (ultimately) of your success, but you 
must not tell the story of your doubt, as you must 
not tell the story of your progress to success 

It has been necessary to analyse these rules be- 
cause in the love-story that is to follow every one 
of them was outraged, and outraged repeatedly. 
To many the story will seem so preposterous as to 
be incredible. Let such readers recall their own 
life-long observance of the conventions of society, 
and get such satisfaction as they may out of the 
thought that they are not as James Boswell. Yet 
Boswell was a human being, who, after his strange 
wooings, became a loving husband. 

Let the reader remember that the evidence which 
is to be placed before him is, in general, taken from 
letters written to the best loved of all his friends, 
the Reverend William Temple, the friend of his 
boyhood, his devoted correspondent and confidant. 
All his days Boswell felt a consuming desire to 
impart his emotions to a confidant, a desire worthy 



no YOUNG BOSWELL 

of comparison, perhaps, with that of the heroines 
in Racine's tragedies, save that it dispenses with 
the trappings of dignity and reserve, unwiUingly 
abandoned, which distinguish the amorous ladies 
of the classical drama. There was much to tell, 
and he could but rejoice that he had a friend to 
tell it to. The story had begun in their boyhood, 
when the two foolish youngsters told each other of 
the kind of woman they would, in future, be willing 
to marry. 

James, it would appear, pretended, in the begin- 
ning, to be mature and philosophical about it all. 
His ambitions, from the earliest moment, seem to 
have been astir, but they prompted him to dreams 
of greatness in the world of men. With the ful- 
fillment of this dream, might not woman interfere ? 
Long before they come within our ken, Temple and 
Boswell, or rather, WilUe and James, had made a 
jest out of this dream of greatness, and they never 
forgot it as long as they lived. Exactly what it 
signified to them we do not know, — for who shall 
interpret the cryptic wit of friendship ? — but its 
general meaning is clear. From the beginning 
Boswell had determined to be great, and from the 
beginning his ambition had been the subject of 
playful jest, such as friend uses with friend. Again 
and again Boswell writes to Temple of some recent 
experience, "I was the Great Man." With this 



IN LOVE 121 

dream of greatness there mingled thoughts of a 
helpmate who should be a worthy mistress of Au- 
chinleck. Manifold were the natural graces and 
the endowments of fortune with which this lady- 
must be blessed : wealth, beauty, and affability 
should unite their charms in the perfect harmony 
that was to make up this impossible she. As 
Shelley, in a later age, was always imagining that 
he had found at last his ideal embodied in the jflesh, 
so, though in less exalted strains and with more 
earthly attributes, did our young Boswell dream 
that he had found his mate. In the first of his 
letters that has come down to us, we find this 
passage : — 

You know I gave you a hint in my last of the con- 
tinuance of my passion for Miss W 1 ; I assure you, 

I am excessively fond of her, so (as I have given you 
fair warning) don't be surprised if your grave, sedate, 
philosophick friend, who used to carry it so high, and 
talk with such a composed indifference of the beauteous 
sex, and whom you used to admonish not to turn an 
Old Man too soon, don't be thunderstruck, if this same 
fellow should all at once, suhito furore abreptus, commence 
Don Quixote for his adorable Dulcinea. But to talk 
seriously, I at first fell violently in love with her, and 
thought I should be quite miserable if I did not obtain 
her; but now it is changed to a rational esteem of her 
good qualities, so that I should be extremely happy to 
pass my life with her, but if she does not incline to it. 



122 YOUNG BOSWELL 

I can bear it aequo animo and retire into tlie calm regions 
of Philosophy. She is, indeed, extremely pretty, and 
posest of every amiable qualification. She dances, 
sings, and plays upon several instruments equally well, 
draws with a great deal of taste, and reads the best 
authors ; at the same time she has a just regard to true 
piety and religion, and behaves in the most easy, af- 
fable way. She is just such a young lady as I could 
wish for the partner of my soul, and you know that is 
not every one, for you and I have often talked how nice 
we would be in such a choice. I own I can have but 
little hopes, as she is a fortune of 30,000 pounds. Heav- 
en knows that sordid motive is farthest from my 
thoughts. She invited me to come and wait upon her, 
so I went last week and drank tea ; I was kindly enter- 
tained, and desired to come when convenient. I have 
reason to believe she has a very good opinion of me, and, 
indeed, a youth of my turn has a better chance to gain 
the affections of a lady of her character, than of any 
other ; but (as I told you before) my mind is in such an 
agreable situation that being refused would not be so 
fatal as to drive me to despair, as your hot-brained, 
romantick lovers talk. Now, my dear friend, I sin- 
cerely ask ten thousand pardons for giving you the 
trouble of this long narration ; but as it is a thing that 
concerns me a good deal, I could not but communicate 
it to you, and I know, when I inform you how happy it 
makes me to open my mind, you will forgive me. Pray 
never speak of it ; you are the only person knows of it, 
except Mr. Love, who reads to her, and takes every un- 
suspected method to lend me his friendly assistance. 
Oh Willie! how happy should I be if she consented, 



IN LOVE 123 

some years after this, to make me blest ! How trans- 
porting to think of such a lady to entertain you at 
Auchinleck ! 

Mr. Love, who was acting as the go-between and 
from whom the young man had probably first 
learned of his charmer, was the actor, whose ac- 
quaintance we made in a former chapter, and who 
eked out a precarious living by teaching elocution 
and borrowing money from Boswell. His efforts 
at match-making, however, were unsuccessful. 

The fair Miss W 1 remains unidentified — the 

blanks which conceal her name are found in the 
manuscript — and disappears for ever from our 
story. She was not destined to become mistress 
of Auchinleck or to settle her £30,000 on our hero. 

The letter from which the quotation is drawn 
is one written by Boswell before he was eighteen 
years old ; he had yet to visit London, to complete 
his legal studies, and to make the Grand Tour. 
But even amid the distractions of London and 
foreign travel, his thoughts ran continually upon 
love. The search for his Dulcinea was to share 
in his search for the Great, and the problem was 
to be laid before more than one of his heroes. 

Mention has already been made of a Baron de 
Zuylen whom Boswell met at Utrecht. His daugh- 
ter Belle (or Isabella), who preferred the fanciful 



124 YOUNG BOSWELL 

name, Z elide, which she had fabricated for herself, 
was exactly of Boswell's age, and like him in many 
respects. She was a true and very delightful 
daughter of the eighteenth century, vivacious in 
the extreme, yet subject to continual fits of sensi- 
bility, romantic yearnings, and dreams of free love. 
As a keen student of mathematics, — she rose 
early in the morning to master conic sections, — 
she soon emancipated herself from the Christian 
religion, which was not sufficiently exact to com- 
mend itseK to her intelligence, and lost herself in 
the perplexities of metaphysical speculation. She 
longed to become rational in thought and conduct. 
But, with all the instincts of a bluestocking, she 
retained a pardonable vanity, and loved laughter 
and high spirits. In introspective fashion she 
wrote a "portrait" of herself, which is perhaps the 
best introduction to her somewhat complicated 
personality. It is in French and may be rendered 
as follows : — 

Compassionate in temper, liberal and generous by 
inclination, Z elide is good only by principle ; when she 
is sweet and yielding, give her credit for making an 
effort. When she is long civil and polite with people 
for whom she does not care, redouble your esteem, for 
it is martyrdom. Vain by nature, her vanity is bound- 
less ; knowledge and contempt of human kind had long 
since given her that. It goes, however, further even 
than that, as Zelide herself must admit. She thinks 




IsaheUa de Zmjlcu, Idler Madaiiie de Cluirr'wre 

The " Zelide " of Boswell's romantic interliule at I'trei-lit 

After a pastel 1)> I,a lour, ITtiti 



IN LOVE 125 

already that glory is naught in comparison with happi- 
ness, and yet she would go far for glory. 

At what period do the lights of the spirit take com- 
mand of the inclinations of the heart ? At that period 
will ZeHde cease to be a coquette. Sad contradiction ! 
Zelide, who would not wish to strike a dog unthinkingly 
or to crush a miserable insect, is perhaps willing, at 
certain moments, to make a man wretched — and this 
by way of amusing herself, in order to win a kind of 
glory which does not even flatter her reason and touches 
her vanity for but an instant. But the fascination is 
short ; apparent success brings her back to herself ; she 
no sooner realises her intention than she despises it, 
abhors it, and would fain renounce it for ever. 

You ask me if Zelide is beautiful, pretty, or passable ? 
I am not sure ; it depends on whether she is loved or 
wishes to make herself loved. She has a fine throat, 
she is sure, and makes a little too much of it, at the 
expense of modesty. Her hand is not white, as she 
also knows, and she makes a jest of it, but she would 
prefer not to have to make it a subject of jest. 

Tender in the extreme, and no less delicate, she can 
be happy neither with love nor without it. Friendship 
never had a holier or worthier temple than Zelide. 
ReaUsing that she is too sensitive to be happy, she has 
almost ceased aspiring to happiness; she devotes her- 
self to virtue, flees repentance, and seeks amusements. 
Pleasures are rare with her, but lively ; she seizes them, 
and relishes them ardently. Knowing that plans are 
vain and the future uncertain, she is particularly de- 
sirous of rendering the moment happy as it flies. 
Do you not guess it? Zelide is a little voluptuous; 



126 YOUNG BOSWELL 

her imagination can make lier smile, even when her 
heart is heavy. Feehngs too strong and lively for her 
mechanism, excessive activity, which lacks a satis- 
factory object — these are the som'ce of all her ills. 
With organs less sensitive, Zelide would have had the 
soul of a great man ; with less wit and sense, she would 
have been only a feeble woman. 

This self-conscious, ambitious young lady and 
our self-conscious, ambitious young hero immedi- 
ately became fast friends. They exchanged news 
of their melancholy symptoms, and Zelide listened 
with patience, and apparently with appreciation, 
to James's eternal advice. Then they would 
suddenly become hilarious, and the wit, as Boswell 
afterwards described it, flashed like lightning. 

But Zelide's skepticism dismayed Boswell. Why 
should the mind of a young lady be possessed by 
the seven devils of rationalism .^^ It is natural 
enough for a man to fall a victim; but females 
should not know that rationalism exists. More- 
over, Boswell had himself been grounded in the 
principles of Christianity by Samuel Johnson, and 
was now reasonably sure of his faith. This was 
perhaps the most serious obstacle to their union, 
and Boswell set himself to remove it. But Zelide 
was not easily influenced, — had she not studied 
conic sections ? — and so Boswell came to feel that 
perhaps, after all, Zelide was not the bride for him. 




The Biogmp/ier in Mrdilalion 

KTiyraN in;;- l).\- \V. T. Green, from a sketeli by Cieorge Laiiatt 



IN LOVE 127 

It would have been a comparatively simple 
thing to win her, had he set about it in a deter- 
mined way, inasmuch as her parents liked the 
young man and encouraged his advances. "II 
est fort mon ami," wrote Zelide, "et fort estime 
de mon pere et de ma mere, de sorte qu'il est tou- 
jours bien regu quand il vient me voir." That he 
approached the subject a score of times, no one 
who reads the following letter can doubt. The 
pair of them seem to have reached a friendly con- 
clusion that they were not suited for each other. 
He appears, with his infinite naweUy to have ex- 
plained her deficiencies to her; for once, when 
reckoning up her various lovers, she wrote, "Bos- 
well will never marry me ; if he did marry me, he 
would have a thousand regrets, for he is convinced 
that I would not suit him, and I do not know that 
I should care to live in Scotland." They agreed, 
therefore ; and yet there was a magnetic force that 
drew them ever to each other. Boswell would 
make love to her, in spite of the finest assertions 
that he was not going to — that he was now a 
completely rational being, a philosophic creature, 
and what not. Perhaps in it all there mingled 
some misgivings at the thought of confessing to his 
father that he was desirous of bringing home a 
Dutch bride. 

The letter which Boswell addressed to Zelide a 



ns YOUNG BOSWELL 

month or so after leaving Utrecht is the only love- 
letter of his which has been preserved to us. It is 
also one of the longest that he ever wrote — so 
long, indeed, that it is inadvisable to print it all. I 
excerpt those passages of it which deal with love. 
It is to be hoped that the reader will not be de- 
ceived by the calmness and impudence of the 
opening passages, but will note the crescendo of 
feeling which culminates in the final postscript. 

Consider, my dear Zelide, your many real advantages. 
You are a daughter of one of the first familys in the 
Seven Provinces; you have a number of relations of 
rank. You have a very handsom fortune, and I must 
tell you, too, that Zelide herself is handsom. You 
have a title to expect a distinguished marriage. You 
may support a respected and an amiable character in 
life. Your genius and your many accomplishments 
may do you great honour. But take care. If those 
enchanting qualitys are not governed by Prudence, 
they may do you a great deal of harm. You have con- 
fest to me that you are subject to hypochondria. I 
well beleive it. You have a delicate constitution and a 
strong imagination. In order to be free from a dis- 
temper which renders you miserable, you must not act 
like one in despair. You must be carefull of your 
health by living regularly, and carefull of your mind 
by employing it moderately. If you act thus you may 
expect to be happy ; if you resign yourseK to fancy, you 
will have, now and then, a little feverish joy, but no 
permanent satisfaction. I should think you should 



IN LOVE 129 

beleive me. I am no clergyman. I am no physician. 
I am not even a lover. I am just a gentleman upon his 
travels who has taken an attachment to you and who 
has your happiness at heart. I may add, a gentleman 
whom you honour with your esteem. My dear Zelide ! 
You are very good, you are very candid. Pray, for- 
give me for begging you to be less vain ; you have fine 
talents of one kind, but are you not deficient in others ? 
Do you think your reason is as distinguished as your 
imagination.? Beleive me, Zelide, it is not. Beleive 
me, and endeavour to improve. 

After all this serious counsel, I think my conscience 
cannot reproach me for writing to you. I am sure that 
your worthy father could not be offended at it. I am 
sure that I intend to do you service if I can. . . . 

As you and I, Zelide, are perfectly easy with each 
other, I must tell you that I am vain enough to read 
your letters in such a manner as to imagine that you 
realy was in love with me, as much as you can be with 
any man. I say was, because I am much mistaken if 
it is not over before now. Reynst ^ had not judged so 
ill. You have no command of yourself. You can con- 
ceal nothing. You seemed uneasy. You had a forced 
merriment. The Sunday evening that I left you I 
could perceive you touched. But I took no notice of 
it. From your conversation I saw very well that I had 
a place in your heart, that you regarded me with a 
warmth more than freindly. Your letters showed me 
that you was pleasing yourself with having at last met 
with the man for whom you could have a strong and a 
lasting passion. But I am too generous not to unde- 
^ Zelide 's brother. 



130 YOUNG BOSWELL 

ceive you. You are sensible that I am a man of strict 
probity. You have told me so. I thank you. I hope 
you shall always find me so. Is it not, however, a little 
hard that I have not a better opinion of you.?^ Own, 
Zelide, that your ungoverned vivacity may be of dis- 
service to you. It renders you less esteemed by the 
man whose esteem you value. You tell me, "Je ne 
vaudrois rien pour voire femme, je rt'ai pas les talens sub- 
alternes." If by these talents you mean the domestic 
virtues, you will find them necessary for the wife of 
every sensible man. But there are many stronger 
reasons against your being my wife, so strong that as I 
said to you formerly, I would not be married to you to 
be a King. I know myself and I know you. And from 
all probability of reasoning, I am very certain that if 
we were married together, it would not be long before 
we should be both very miserable. My wife must be 
a character directly opposite to my dear Zelide, except 
in affection, in honesty, and in good humour. You 
may depend upon me as a freind. It vexes me to think 
what a number of freinds you have. I know, Zelide, 
of several people that you correspond with. I am 
therefore not so vain of your corresponding with me. 
But I love you, and would wish to contribute to your 
happiness. 

We may well pause here for breath. There has 
been little enough so far of what is conventionally 
regarded as the style of a love-letter ; nevertheless, 
when a gentleman displays obvious annoyance 
because a lady has so many other correspondents, 
he may, if a thousand novelists speak the truth, 



IN LOVE 131 

be regarded as having reached that stage of jeal- 
ousy to which she has labored to reduce him. It 
is clear that, whether or not Z elide cared to marry 
our friend, she was not unwilling that he should 
languish at her feet. Did she not confess herself a 
coquette ? That she knew how to pique his inter- 
est is evident from her very words, which have 
struck him, as she intended they should do, and 
which rankle. The talents of a subaltern wife she 
does not possess. Nor, I venture to think, was it 
well for Boswell to marry a woman who had them. 
But let us return to our letter. 

You bid me write whatever I think. I ask your 
pardon for not complying with that request. I shall 
write nothing that I do not think. But you are not 
the person to whom I could without reserve write all 
that I think. After this I shall write in French. Your 
correspondence will improve me much in that language. 
You write it charmingly. Am I not very obedient to 
your orders of writing des grandes lettres? You must 
do the same. While I remain at Berlin, my address is 
chez Messieurs Splizerber et Daum, Berlin. Adieu. 
Think and be happy. Pray write soon and continue 
to show me all your heart. I fear all your fancy. I 
fear that the heart of Zelide is not to be found. It has 
been consumed by the fire of an excessive imagination. 
Forgive me for talking to you with such an air of au- 
thority. I have assumed the person of Mentor. I 
must keep it up. Perhaps I judge too hardly of you. 
I think you have cordiality and yet you are much at- 



132 YOUNG BOSWELL 

tached to your father and to your brothers. Defend 
yourself. Tell me that I am the severe Cato. Tell me 
that you will make a very good wife. Let me ask you, 
then, Zelide, could you submit your inclinations to the 
opinion, perhaps the caprice, of a husband .^^ Could 
you do this with chearfulness, without losing any of 
your sweet good humour, without boasting of it.^* 
Could you live quietly in the country six months a year ? 
Could you make yourself agreeable to plain honest 
neighbours.'* Could you talk like any other woman, 
and have your fancy as much at command as yoiu* harpsi- 
chord ? Could you pass the other six months in a.city where 
there is very good society, though not the high mode ? 

At this point the reader interrupts the writer 
with cries of protest, fortissimo. We all reply 
unanimously in the negative. Poor Zelide, you 
certainly could not do these things, and well did 
James Boswell know it. He knew that Zelide 
could not be happy at Auchinleck, because he 
could not be happy there himself ; and if the reader 
will have the patience to look once more at the 
questions that are asked, he will hear the echoes 
of a conversation between James and Zelide, in 
which she had been given an account of the mani- 
fold miseries of life in Scotland. Withal, the whole 
passage is touched with that preposterous humour 
to which Boswell liked to feel that his friends 
finally became accustomed. But his catechism is 
not yet finished. 



IN LOVE 133 

Could you live thus, and be content? Could you 
have a great deal of amusement in your own family? 
Could you give spirits to your husband when he is 
melancholy ? I have known such wives, Zelide. What 
think you? Could you be such a one? If you can, 
you may be happy with the sort of man that I once de- 
scribed to you. Adieu. 

Let not religion make you unhappy. Think of God 
as he realy is, and all will appear chearfull. I hope you 
shall be a Christian. But, my dear Zelide! worship 
the sun rather than be a Calvinist. You know what I 
mean. I had sealed this letter. I must break it up 
and write a little more. This is somewhat like you. I 
charge you once for all, Be strictly honest with me. If 
you love me, own it. I can give you the best advice. 
If you change, tell me. If you love another, tell me. 
I don't understand a word of your mystery about "a 
certain gentleman whom you think of three times a 
day." What do you mean by it? Berhn is a most 
delightfull city. I am quite happy. I love you more 
than ever. I would do more than ever to serve you. I 
would kneel and kiss your hand, if I saw you married to 
the man that could make you happy. Answer me this 
one question. If I had pretended a passion for you, 
which I might easily have done, for it is not difficult 
to make us beleive what we are allready pleased to 
imagine — answer me — would you not have gone to 
the world's end ? Supposing even that I had been dis- 
inherited by my father, would you not have said, " Sir, 
here is my portion. It is yours. We may Hve gen- 
teely upon it." Zelide, Zelide, excuse my vanity. But 
I tell you, you do not know yourself, if you say that 



134 YOUNG BOSWELL 

you would not have done thus. You see how freely I 
write, and how proudly. Write you with all freedom, 
but with your enchanting humility ! " Je suis glorieuse 
d'etre voire amie." That is the stile. Is not this a long 
letter? You must not expect me to write regularly. 
Farewell, my dear Zelide. Heaven bless you, and make 
you rationaly happy. Farewell. 

This letter, I need scarcely remark, is one of 
Boswell's most characteristic performances. I 
have known young ladies to become virtuously 
indignant over it. There is not in it, we may 
admit, that note of chivalry which is supposed to 
indicate a noble devotion to the sex. And yet, 
when allowance is made for the insolence of it all, 
for its pomposity and its sermonising, I do not 
believe that Zelide was displeased with it. Did 
she not keep it as long as she lived .^^ The very 
jumble of the sentences in the postscript is elo- 
quent. "I don't understand a word of your mys- 
tery of a certain gentleman whom you think of 
three times a day. What do you mean by it.^^ 
Berlin is a most delightfuU city. I am quite happy. 
I love you more than ever." If Zelide did not 
realise that the creature was trapped, she must 
have been devoid of feminine instinct. If she 
wanted Boswell, she had but to stoop and pick him 
up. 

For some excellent feminine reason she decided 



IN LOVE 135 

not to take him at the moment. She was not sure. 
There were other candidates. And then there 
was the thought of Kving in Scotland, which Bos- 
well had done nothing to make attractive to her. 
It was safe to postpone the whole affair. But she 
did not neglect him. She continued to write to 
him, as we know from the fact that Boswell laid 
her letters before the philosophic gaze of Rous- 
seau. 

During my melancholy at Utrecht [he wrote in 
December to Rousseau] I made the acquaintance of a 
young woman of the highest nobility, and very rich. I 
conducted myself in such a way as to win the reputa- 
tion of a philosopher. Ah, how deceptive are appear- 
ances ! If you care to amuse yourself by reading some 
pieces by this young lady, you will find them in a small, 
separate parcel. I should like to have your sentiments 
on her character. You are the only one to whom I 
have showed her papers. I could entrust to you any- 
thing in the world [vous confier tout au monde]. 

Perhaps Rousseau could not have done better 
than to advise Boswell to win Zelide as fast as ever 
he could. Just why James feared her vivacity is 
not clear — perhaps it was because she did not 
have complete respect for the conventions of 
society. But neither did he. Marrying a girl 
with the same faults that you have yourself has 
at least this advantage, that they will not come to 



136 YOUNG BOSWELL 

her with a shock of painful novelty, or become an 
increasing burden with the years. There are 
people (very modern people) who fancy that Bene- 
dick and Beatrice quarrelled and separated soon 
after their marriage. Certainly they were too 
wise to live after the conventional standards set 
by Claudio and Hero. At any rate, I have never 
heard of any one who thought that they were 
likely to perish of dulness and boredom. We may 
quarrel with people constituted like ourselves, but 
we have also the priceless means of understanding 
them. Boswell missed the opportunity to marry 
a girl who understood him. Had they married, 
she might very probably not have contrived to 
make of him a steadier or a better man ; but I do 
not think she would have blushed for him. The 
Boswell family has always been ashamed of the 
only genius that ever adorned it — a temptation 
which Zelide, with her more liberal training and 
temper, might have been depended upon to with- 
stand. 

And so Boswell saw Zelide no more. But he 
could not soon forget her, and she will appear again 
in our story. 

In "sweet Siena," Boswell encountered an "Ital- 
ian Signora," of a more than earthly beauty, no 
doubt, who detained him there long after he should 
have been off to Corsica. Of her we know nothing. 



IN LOVE 137 

But we do know that the whole problem of our 
hero's relations with the sex was laid before Paoli ; 
that he gave the finest advice, and also promised 
Boswell that, if he would return in twenty years, 
he would find in Corsica, not only science and art, 
but ladies as splendid as those in any Parisian 
salon. 



CHAPTER VII 
WOOING A WIFE 

In the little village of Adamtown, not far from 
Auchinleck, there lived, in the year 1767, a widow 
by the name of Blair. Her daughter Kate, the 
heir to the fortime which had been left by the late 
Mr. Blair, was eighteen years of age, and de- 
scribed, after the manner of the period, as being 
sensible, cheerful, and pious, and of a countenance 
which, though not beautiful, was "agreeable." 
During her minority her relative, the Laird of 
Auchinleck, had been one of her guardians; and 
of a Sunday she sat dutifully in the Master's pew 
of the little church on the estate. 

In the eyes of the young Boswell, just home 
from his travels, this Scots cousin of his was the 
finest woman he had ever seen, and her charms 
were in no way injured by the fact that she pos- 
sessed great wealth. What a Mistress of Auchin- 
leck she would make! Her picture would adorn 
the family gallery — " Catherine, wife of James 
Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck." Her children would 
be as clever as their father (or his friend, the 
Reverend William Temple), and as charming as 
their mother. Here, at any rate, was a flame of 



WOOING A WIFE 139 

whom one's father might approve. She would, 
the boy explained, add her lands to the ancestral 
estates, and he, as her husband, might have, at 
once, "a pretty little estate, a good house, and a 
sweet place." 

"I wish you had her," said the father laconically. 
To her estate James accordingly repaired, and 
began his suit. He so far succeeded as to prevail 
upon Mrs. Blair to come and make a visit at Au- 
chinleck, and to bring Kate with her. The visit 
lasted four days, and there, amid the romantic 
groves of the family seat, he adored her like a 
divinity. She was henceforward the "Princess," 
and before the month of June was out, James 
rather prematurely referred to her as "my charm- 
ing bride." When Temple came to Edinburgh 
to visit the young advocate, he was told that he 
must ride across country to Adamtown, on a 
romantic errand, and inspect the goddess. He 
should have his "consultation guineas" for such 
expert advice as he, a lifelong friend, knowing the 
full story of James's foibles, might care to give. 

One of the most highly characteristic of Bos- 
wellian documents is a sheet of instructions which 
the young fellow wrote out for his friend, and en- 
titled, "Instructions for Mr. Temple, on his Tour 
to Auchinleck and Adamtown." It is well known, 
but we cannot afford to forgo the information that 



140 YOUNG BOSWELL 

it contains ; and a portion of it may be reprinted, 
as given by its first editor. The sheet has been, 
unfortunately, separated from the manuscript of 
which it was originally a part, and its present 
location is unknown. 

He will set out in the fly on Monday morning, and 
reach Glasgow by noon. Put up at Graham's, and ask 
for the horses bespoke by Mr. Boswell. Take tickets 
for the Friday's fly. Eat some cold victuals. Set out 
for Kingswell, to which you have good road; arrived 
there, get a guide to put you through the muir to Lou- 
doun ; from thence Thomas knows the road to Auchin- 
leck, where the worthy overseer, Mr. James Bruce, 
will receive you. Be easy with him, and you will like 
him much ; expect but moderate entertainment, as the 
family is not at home. 

Tuesday, — See the house ; look at the front ; choose 
your room ; advise as to pavilions. Have James Bruce 
to conduct you to the cab-house ; to the old castle ; to 
where I am to make the superb grotto ; up the river to 
Broomsholm; the natural bridge; the grotto; the 
grotto- walk down to the Gothic bridge; anything else 
he pleases. 

Wednesday. — Breakfast at eight ; set out at nine ; 
Thomas will bring you to Adamtown a little after 
eleven. Send up your name; if possible, put up your 
horses there ; they can have cut grass ; if not, Thomas 
will take them to Mountain, a place a mile off, and 
come back and wait at dinner. Give Miss Blair my 
letter. Salute her and her mother ; ask to walk. See 
the place fully; think what improvements should be 



WOOING A WIFE 141 

made. Talk of my mare, the purse, the chocolate. 
Tell you are my very old and intimate friend. Praise 
me for my good qualities — you know them ; but talk 
also how odd, how inconstant, how impetuous, how 
much accustomed to women of intrigue. Ask gravely, 
"Pray don't you imagine there is something of madness 
in that family?" Talk of my various travels — Ger- 
man princes, Voltaire, and Rousseau. Talk of my 
father ; my strong desire to have my own house. Ob- 
serve her well. See how amiable ! Judge if she would 
be happy with your friend. Think of me as the "great 
man'* at Adamtown — quite classical, too ! Study the 
mother. Remember well what passes. Stay tea. At 
six, order horses, and go to New Mills, two miles from 
Loudoun ; but if they press you to stay all night, do it. 
Be a man of as much ease as possible. Consider what 
a romantic expedition you are on. Take notes; per- 
haps you now fix me for life. 

Whether the young clergyman took notes enough 
to satisfy the future biographer, and whether he 
showed a subtle skill in uniting an indulgent ac- 
count of Boswell's inconstancy and impetuosity 
with a eulogy of his good qualities, I very much 
doubt. The role of ambassador in affairs of the 
heart has ever been fraught with peril ; moreover. 
Temple was a somewhat stiff and solemn young 
man, with a personal — and professional — disap- 
proval of Boswell's propensity to intrigue. He was 
neither odd nor vivacious; and though he loved 
his friend for his eccentric charm, it may be 



142 YOUNG BOSWELL 

doubted whether he quite succeeded in communi- 
cating it. 

One incident of Temple's visit was peculiarly 
alarming. At Adamtown he met a merchant 
named Fullarton, recently returned from the East 
Indies, — the whole episode reads like a chapter 
out of "Roderick Random," — who is thereafter 
called "the Nabob." His presence there dis- 
mayed Boswell, and caused him to cry out, "The 
mare, the purse, the chocolate, where are they 
now ? . . . I am certainly not deeply in love," he 
added, "for I am entertained with this dilemma 
like another chapter in my adventures, though I 
own to you that I have a more serious attachment 
to her than I ever had to anybody ; for 'here ev'ry 
flower is united.'" 

Boswell had, in truth, got himself into the emo- 
tional rapids. The speed at which he was travel- 
ling was thrilling, and the constant change of scene 
and mood afforded him infinite entertainment; 
but the point towards which he was plunging he 
could not clearly foresee. To begin with the least 
of his difficulties, he was still in correspondence 
with both Zelide and the Italian Signora. The 
former let him know that she talked of him with- 
out either resentment or attachment; the latter 
wrote "with all the warmth of Italian affection." 
Kate Blair was better suited to him and to Auchin- 



WOOING A WIFE 143 

leek, to be sure ; but the vivacious Dutch woman 
and the passionate Italian offered a life of novelty 
and excitement. One of the Signora's letters, 
indeed, moved him to tears. And so he fluttered, 
in thought, from flower to flower, and tasted the 
sweets of each ; but he returned ever and anon to 
the heiress. 

His was an embarrassment of riches. We are 
dealing now with the most dissipated period in a 
life which was never conspicuous for self-restraint. 
It may be questioned whether it is right to bring 
to bear against a man the information that is pri- 
vately conveyed in a letter to his most intimate 
friend, or whether, even after the lapse of a cen- 
tury and a half, a writer is justified in setting down 
in cold print the facts that he has read in docu- 
ments that ought never to have been preserved. 
The public is harsh, and the critics are harsher, if 
not actually hypocritical, in dealing with erring 
mortals who are no longer here to defend them- 
selves or to destroy the evidence against them. 
"The important thing," it has been said, "is not 
to get caught"; and the adage is as true of the 
mighty dead as it is of the living. And yet the 
man who has chanced upon new facts in the biog- 
raphy of a great writer may perhaps be pardoned 
for giving them to the world ; for unless he actu- 
ally destroys the evidence which he has found 



144 YOUNG BOSWELL 

(which of course he has no manner of right to do), 
he must reckon with the certainty that some later 
investigator will turn it up and put it into print. 
The scholar is not responsible for the original 
recording of the facts ; he merely reports what he 
has found ; it is not his office to apportion a great 
man's meed of praise or infamy. Such a practice 
has at least the approval of Johnson. When, 
years later, Boswell proposed to print the autobiog- 
raphy of Sir Robert Sibbald, which he thought 
"the most natural and candid account of himself 
that ever was given by any man," Mrs. Thrale 
objected, and gave the usual reason : "To discover 
such weakness exposes a man when he is gone." 
"Nay," said Johnson, "it is an honest picture of 
human nature." 

The fact, then, is that Boswell had sought out 
the company of other "charmers," notably that 
of a brunette, whom he habitually describes as his 
"black friend," and who was known to his friends 
as "the Moffat woman," because he had met her 
at the town of that name. Her real name is, for- 
tunately, unknown to us. Temple was eager to 
get his friend married off, in order to rescue him 
from this artful female. 

I startle [Boswell said to Temple] when you talk of 
keeping another man's wife. Yet that was literally my 
scheme, though my imagination represented it just as 



WOOING A WIFE 145 

being fond of a pretty, lively, black little lady, who, to 
oblige me, staid in Edinburgh, and I very genteely paid 
her expenses. You will see by my letter to her that I 
shall have a house and a servant-maid upon my hands. 

Nevertheless he could not break the disgraceful 
bond. Perhaps he had neither the will nor the 
inclination to do so ; in any case, he could not do 
so at the moment, for the woman was about to 
bear him a child. In December she gave birth to 
a daughter, who was named "Sally." Boswell 
makes one reference to her, in a letter to Temple, 
and then is silent for ever. Of Sally we hear no 
more. 

All this happened in the midst of the negotia- 
tions for the hand of the Princess Kate. One can 
but wonder whether the heiress heard any rumour 
of the irregularity of her lover's life at the moment 
when his devotion to her was supposed to be all- 
absorbing. It is certain that she did hear gossip 
of another kind. Boswell had been rash in talking 
about his "Princess" and her "wary mother," and 
had even spoken of their wish to make a good thing 
out of any future alliance. This he referred to 
metaphorically (and indiscreetly) as their system 
of salmon-fishing. Gossip came to the ears of Mrs. 
Blair, and the Princess, not unnaturally, left Bos- 
well's letters unanswered. 

Boswell, too, heard gossip. Miss Blair was, a 



146 YOUNG BOSWELL 

friend told him, a well-known jilt. Yet tlie situa- 
tion never became so strained as to result in a 
quarrel. The ladies were, indeed, "wary." Why 
should they not be so? James was decidedly a 
good catch, a clever and entertaining young fellow 
enough, if only, to use his own words, he could 
restrain his flightiness. It was not necessary, the 
ladies thought, to break with him; but only to 
administer a snub. He was allowed to think that 
the Nabob was winning the day. New rivals ap- 
peared. Boswell fretted and fussed. He wrote 
more letters. At last a temporising reply was 
sent by the Princess. Her calmness brought him 
once more to a state of subjection, in which he was 
convinced that he was at last genuinely in love. 

Then, suddenly. Miss Blair burst like a star on 
Edinburgh, the guest of Lord Kames, the intimate 
friend and companion of her cousin, Jenny Max- 
well, the young Duchess of Gordon. Boswell flew 
to her at once. She was capricious. At first she 
seemed glad to see him there. Again, she was 
distant and reserved. Probably the Duchess had 
opinions of the suitor which were not without in- 
fluence. Yet the two were together often. Bos- 
well accompanied the young ladies to the theatre 
to witness a performance of "Othello," and in the 
jealous Moor he saw the very likeness of himself. 
How many a lover has been emboldened by the 



WOOING A WIFE 147 

mimic scene! At this moment he put his arm 
about her waist, and fancied that she leaned 
towards him. He watched her tears, and often 
spoke to her of the torment that they saw before 
them. Still he thought her distant. 

At last the young Duchess went away from Edin- 
burgh, and Boswell was glad of it. He went again 
to his Princess. The story of his interview is as 
vivid as anything in the *'Life of Johnson." 

I found her alone, and she did not seem distant. I 
told her that I was most sincerely in love with her, and 
that I only dreaded those faults which I had acknowl- 
edged to her. I asked her seriously if she now believed 
me in earnest. She said she did. I then asked her to 
be candid and fair as I had been with her, and to tell 
me if she had any particular liking for me. What 
think you, Temple, was her answer.^ "No; I really," 
said she, "have no particular liking for you ; I like many 
people as well as you." (Temple, you must have it in 
the genuine dialogue.) 

Boswell. — Do you indeed ? Well, I cannot help 
it. I am obliged to you for telling me so in time. I 
am sorry for it. 

Princess. — I like Jeany Maxwell [Duchess of Gor- 
don] better than you. 

B. — Very well. But do you like no man better than 
me? 

P. — No. 

B. — Is it possible that you may like me better than 
other men ? 



148 YOUNG BOSWELL 

P. — I don't know what is possible. 

(By this time I had risen and placed myself by her, 
and was in real agitation.) 

B. — I '11 tell you what, my dear Miss Blair, I love 
you so much that I am very unhappy. If you cannot 
love me, I must, if possible, endeavour to forget you. 
What would you have me do ? 

P. — I really don't know what you should do. 

B. — It is certainly possible that you may love me, 
and if you shall ever do so, I shall be the happiest man 
in the world. Will you make a fair bargain with me ? 
If you should happen to love me, will you own it ? 

P. — Yes. 

B. — And if you should happen to love another, 
will you tell me immediately, and help me to make 
myself easy ? 

P. — Yes, I wiU. 

B. — Well, you are very good. (Often squeezing and 
kissing her fine hand, while she looked at me with those 
beautiful black eyes.) 

P. — I may tell you as a cousin what I would not tell 
to another man. 

B. — You may, indeed. You are very fond of Au- 
chinleck — that is one good circumstance. 

P. — I confess I am. I wish I liked you as well as I 
do Auchinleck. 

B. — I have told you how fond I am of you. But 
unless you like me sincerely, I have too much spirit to 
ask you to live with me, as I know that you do not like 
me. If I could have you this moment for my wife, I 
would not. 



WOOING A WIFE 149 

P. — I should not like to put myself in your offer, 
though. 

B. — Remember, you are both my cousin and my 
mistress, you must make me suffer as little as possible. 
As it may happen that I may engage your affections, 
I should think myself a most dishonourable man, if I 
were not now in earnest ; and, remember, I depend upon 
your sincerity ; and, whatever happens, you and I shall 
never have any quarrel. 

P. — Never. 

B. — And I may come and see you as much as I 
please ? 

P. — Yes. 

reader, is not this scene worthy of the great 
TroUope ? More modern in tone than Fielding or 
Fanny Burney? Do you not hear the very lan- 
guage of the eighteenth century more distinctly 
than in the words of the Narcissas and Sophias who 
crowd the pages of its fictions .^^ Somehow, I 
cannot but like the black-eyed Kate. She was a 
coquette, of course, — much more of a coquette 
than Z elide, — but I should think all young ladies 
would be grateful to her for her retort to our hero : 
"I wish I liked you as well as I do Auchinleck." 

Of the art of a man who could thus set down the 
very words of his courtship in a letter to a friend, 
not much can be said, for most readers will be 
thinking rather of the breach of decorum than of 
the perfection of the art. It would certainly be 



150 YOUNG BOSWELL 

difficult to discover a passage in any work of fiction 
which sets forth more vividly the uncertain emo- 
tions which surge over a young pair who are dis- 
cussing the very vital question whether or not 
they wish to get married. It is all very droll, of 
course. But then our Bos well was one of the 
drollest men who ever lived. "Curious'* was his 
own word for the scene : — 

My worthy friend, what sort of a scene was this ? It 
was most curious. She said she would submit to her 
husband in most things. She said that to see one 
loving her would go far to make her love that person ; 
but she could not talk anyhow positively, for she never 
had felt the uneasy anxiety of love. We were an hour 
and a half together, and seemed pleased all the time. I 
think she behaved with spirit and propriety. I admire 
her more than ever. . . . She has the justest ideas. 
She said she knew me now. She could laugh me out 
of my ill-humour. She could give Lord Auchinleck a 
lesson how to manage me. Temple, what does the girl 
mean ? 

What did she mean ? It was clear only that she 
was leading him a chase — he knew not whither. 
The thought of his rivals dismayed him contin- 
ually. There was, in particular, a young Member 
of Parliament, who was also a knight and an offi- 
cer in the Guards, Sir Alexander Gilmour, said to 
be worth £1,600 a year. Wliat chance was there 
with such a competitor .^^ Boswell, who realised 



WOOING A WIFE 151 

that it would be "a noble match," began to feel 
that the game was up. 

And then, suddenly, who should appear in Edin- 
burgh but the Nabob ! He was himself no happy 
suitor, but had concluded, from his own experi- 
ences with Kate, that she intended to take Boswell. 
This he himself explained to Boswell when they 
met. For meet they did. James, it would appear, 
scraped acquaintance with Mr. Fullarton by way 
of discovering how he stood with the charmer. 
The Nabob was all friendliness, and together they 
joked about the situation in which they found 
themselves. Together they went and called upon 
Miss Blair. They were surprised to find that, 
though she behaved exceedingly well, her reserve 
was more than ordinary. When they left her, 
they cried aloud with one accord, "Upon my soul, 
a fine woman!" 

In a burst of friendly admiration, Boswell pro- 
posed that they should sup together at the house 
of one of his numerous cousins, and talk matters 
over. Perhaps, between them, they could get 
something accomplished. "I do believe, Mr. Ful- 
larton," said Boswell, *'you and I are in the same 
situation here. Is it possible to be upon honour, 
and generous, in an affair of this kind ? " 

They agreed that it was possible. After supper, 
they adjourned to a tavern, where we may be 



152 YOUNG BOSWELL 

certain that they drank the lady's health, and can- 
vassed the situation. Boswell repeated to FuUar- 
ton his friend Dempster's opinion that all Miss 
Blair's connexions were in an absolute confederacy 
to lay hold of every man who had a thousand 
pounds a year, and repeated his own mot about the 
salmon-fishing. "You have hit it," cried the in- 
genuous Nabob; "we're all kept in play; but I 
am positive you are the fish, and Sir Alexander is 
only a mock salmon to force you to jump more 
expeditiously at the bait." The new allies sat 
together till two in the morning, by which time 
they had agreed that both should offer themselves 
once more to Miss Blair, privatim et seriatim. 
Boswell was to offer first. 

In the morning — or, rather, later in the morn- 
ing — he presented himself once more before the 
Princess. She received him, and made tea for 
him. It was well for Boswell that he had come 
first, for the lady was feeling gracious, though she 
had apparently decided to put an end to the 
affair. She begged Mr. Boswell not to be angry, 
though she must be honest with him. "What, 
then," said Boswell, "have I no chance V "No," 
said she. He asked her to repeat the rejection 
"upon her word and upon honour," and she did so. 

She would not tell me [he adds] whether she was 
engaged to the knight. She said she would not satisfy 



WOOING A WIFE 153 

an idle curiosity. But I own I had no doubt of it. 
What amazed me was that she and I were as easy and 
as good friends as ever. I told her I have great animal 
spirits, and bear it wonderfully well. But this is really 
hard. I am thrown upon the wide world again. I 
don't know what will become of me. 

It was, I have said, well for Boswell that he had 
gone first to try his fortune with the heiress. The 
other victim got shorter shrift. Alas, poor Nabob ! 
With his appearance on the scene a sudden light 
must have dawned upon Miss Blair. Despite the 
"serious and submissive manner" in which the 
Nabob came to her, she had grown suspicious of 
collusion; for, as he confided to Boswell, "she 
would give him no satisfaction, and treated him 
with a degree of coldness that overpowered him 
quite." 

Well, our Boswell was destined to learn the true 
nature of a coquette. Zelide had never treated 
him like this. Perhaps, after all, he had made a 
mistake. Meanwhile his mind was diverted by a 
visit to London, where he was delighted to find 
that he was at last, in truth, "a great man." His 
"Account of Corsica" had appeared, and had 
brought him no small amount of fame. He now 
had his reward for his audacity in visiting the 
island. A crisis in the fortunes of Paoli and the 
Corsicans was rapidly approaching; the future of 



154 YOUNG BOSWELL 

Corsica was becoming a matter of international 
significance and public interest. Boswell's book 
was bought and read. Among other readers was 
Z^lide. She wrote Boswell about the reception 
of the book in Holland, told him that two Dutch 
translations were under way, and proposed herself 
to render the book into French. 

Boswell was delighted. Zelide was a woman 
worth knowing! Correspondence with her flour- 
ished once more. "Upon my soul, Temple, I must 
have her!" he wrote in March. "She is so sen- 
sible, so accomplished, and knows me so well, and 
likes me so much, that I do not see how I can be 
unhappy with her." He had persuaded his god- 
father. Sir John Pringle, who had seen Zelide on 
the Continent, that she was perfectly adapted to 
him, and wrote to his father begging permission to 
go over to Utrecht and propose. He had already 
broached the matter to Zelide, and she had sug- 
gested that they meet without having pledged 
themselves in any way, and see whether they would 
dare to risk an engagement — if not, they might 
still be friends for life. "My dear friend," she 
wrote a little later, "it is prejudice that has kept 
you so much at a distance from me. If we meet, 
I am sure that prejudice will be removed." 

But Temple, being a clergyman and English, 



WOOING A WIFE 155 

disapproved of the foreign woman. (" What would 
you think of the fine, healthy, amiable Miss Dick, 
with whom you dined so agreeably?" Boswell 
asked Temple, parenthetically.) And then he sent 
Zelide's next letter to his father, that the Laird 
might see for himself what a lady she was. 

How do we know but she is an inestimable prize.? 
[he wrote to Temple in April]. Surely it is worth while 
to go to Holland to see a fair conclusion, one way or 
other, of what has hovered in my mind for years. I 
have written to her, and told her all my perplexity. I 
have put in the plainest light what conduct I absolutely 
require of her ; and what my father will require. I have 
bid her be my wife at present, and comfort me with a 
letter in which she shall shew at once her wisdom, her 
spirit, and her regard for me. You shall see it. I tell 
you, man, she knows and values me as you do. After 
reading the enclosed letters, I am sure you will be better 
disposed towards my charming Zelide. 

How arrogant is man! Zelide took ofiPence at 
last, and sent to Boswell an "acid epistle," the 
flashing wit of which, he complained to Temple, 
scorched him. She was a lady, brilliant enough, 
to be sure, but likely to become a termagant at 
forty — and already she was near thirty. Sud- 
denly a fear attacked him that his father would 
consent to his proposal to go over to Utrecht and 
woo. But luckily Lord Auchinleck was firm. He 



156 YOUNG BOSWELL 

would have no Dutch women at Auchinleck ; and 
so his son now gladly obeyed his behest to let the 
woman alone. "Worthy man!" cried the boy, 
"this will be a solace to him upon his circuit." 

As for Zelide [he wrote to Temple] I have written to 
her that we are agreed. "My pride," say I, "and your 
vanity would never agree. It would be like the scene 
in our burlesque comedy, 'The Rehearsal' : 'I am the 
bold thunder,' cries one; *the quick lightning I,' cries 
another. Et voild notre menage." But she and I will 
all ways be good correspondents. 

This final renunciation occurred in May, 1768, 
more than four years after the establishment of 
their intimacy at Utrecht. 

How Boswell weathered it out till summer, it is 
not easy to say ; he was now, to use his own words, 
"thrown upon the world again." But a man who 
unites with an extreme susceptibility a fixed deter- 
mination to marry cannot be long bereaved. In 
the course of a visit to his cousins, the Montgom- 
ery s of Lainshaw, he met the "finest creature that 
ever was formed," and named her at once la belle 
Irlandaise. She was an Irish cousin of Margaret 
Montgomery, and so no time need be lost in pre- 
liminaries. She had a sweet countenance, full 
of sensibility, and was "formed like a Grecian 
nymph"; her age was sixteen. Her father (who 
had an estate of £1000 a year and "above £10,000 



WOOING A WIFE 157 

in ready money") was an Irish counsellor-at-law, 
and as worthy a man as Boswell had ever met. 
Father, mother, and aunt were all in Scotland with 
la belle Irlandaise, whose name was Mary Anne. 
Father, mother, and aunt all approved of James. 
"Mr. Boswell," said the aunt to him, "I tell you 
seriously there will be no fear of this succeeding, 
but from your own inconstancy." It was ar- 
ranged that Boswell should visit Ireland in March, 
and, furthermore, that in the meantime he should 
correspond — with the father. 

The thought of a visit to Ireland added a glow 
to wooing; the theatre of his adventures was 
widening once more. The "Account of Corsica" 
was being printed in Ireland, — a so-called "third 
edition," — and its success had given the father 
and mother — Boswell seems habitually to have 
encountered "wary" parents — an opportunity 
of flattering the suitor. 

From morning to night, I admired the charming Mary 
Anne. Upon my honour, I never was so much in love. 
I never was before in a situation to which there was 
not some objection ; hut here evry flower is united, and 
not a thorn to be found. But how shall I manage it ? 
They were in a hurry, and are gone home to Ireland. 
They were sorry they could not come to see Auchinleck, 
of which they had heard a great deal. Mary Anne 
wished much to be in the grotto. It is a pity they did 
not come. This Princely Seat would have had some 



158 YOUNG BOSWELL 

effect. ... I was allowed to walk a great deal with 
Miss. I repeated my fervent passion to her again and 
again. She was pleased, and I could swear that her 
little heart beat. I carved the first letter of her name 
on a tree. I cut off a lock of her hair, male pertinaci. 
She promised not to forget me, nor to marry a lord 
before March." 

Temple was not the only friend who heard of the 
passion for Miss Mary Anne. The whole story 
was confided to Sir Alexander and Lady Dick. 
The latter had reached the cynical conclusion, 
shared perhaps by the reader, that Boswell was 
eager to marry money. Of this sordid motive 
Boswell speaks in a letter to Sir Alexander, a para- 
graph of which is here printed for the first time. 
The reader may make what he can of it. 

The Irish heiress whom I went to see at Lainshaw 
turned out to be the finest creature that ever I beheld, 
a perfect Arcadian shepherdess, not seventeen ; so that 
instead of solid plans of fortune-hunting, I thought of 
nothing but the enchanting reveries of gallantry. It 
was quite a fairy tale. I know that if I were to tell this 
to Lady Dick, she would not believe a word of it, but 
would maintain that I am disguising, even to myself, 
my old passion for gold. The truth, however, is that 
I am in love as much as ever man was, and if I played 
Carrickfergus once before, I play it a hundred times 
now. 

I was lately at Adamtown, and had a long talk with 



WOOING A WIFE 159 

Heiress Kate by the side of her wood. She told me that 
the knight Sir Sawney was never to rule her territories. 
But alas, what could I say to her while my heart was 
beyond the sea ? So much for love ! 

A very dangerous relapse, however, in favour of 
the Princess now occurred. Sir Alexander Gilmour 
(or Sir Sawney, as Boswell had nicknamed him) had 
made off, and the wary mother, it seems, was not 
unwilling that James should again be received as a 
suitor. Once more, therefore, did he walk " whole 
hours" with Miss Blair, and once again did he 
kneel before her. Letters were written in the old 
manner, designed to melt down Kate's coldness. 
And then "came a kind letter from my amiable 
Aunt Boyd in Ireland, and all the charms of sweet 
Marianne revived." 

This was in December. In the spring, somewhat 
later than had originally been intended, the pro- 
posed visit to Ireland was made. Boswell had, as 
a companion, his cousin Margaret Montgomery, 
the particular friend of Mary Anne ; at Margaret's 
home in Lainshaw, it will be recalled, he had first 
met la belle Irlandaise. It is odd that Boswell 
should have said so little of this visit. It is not 
mentioned in the "Life of Johnson." Indeed, 
practically nothing has been known hitherto of 
Boswell's visit to that remarkable island ; but the 
discovery of a letter to Sir Alexander Dick, written 



160 YOUNG BOSWELL 

from Donaghadee, on May 29, 1769, lights up the 
whole of this obscure period in Boswell's life. In 
Ireland Boswell ran true to form. He was careful 
to meet the Lord Lieutenant. Why should one 
cross the Irish Sea and fail to meet the most prom- 
inent man in the nation ? But how to approach a 
lord lieutenant .f^ As a friend of Corsica. Noth- 
ing more natural. By this device he had obtained 
an interview with William Pitt, the Prime Minister 
of England, three years before, when he had called 
on the great man, dressed in Corsican costume, and 
pleaded for his foreign friends. He now found the 
Irish naturally well disposed towards the Corsi- 
cans. 

The Lord Lieutenant was remarkably good to me 
[he writes]. And I assure you I have not met a firmer 
and keener Corsican. I believe something considerable 
will be raised in this kingdom for the brave islanders. 
I am indefatigable in fanning the generous fire. I have 
lately received a noble, spirited letter from Paoli. This 
I have shewn to numbers, and it has had an admirable 
effect. 

Boswell liked the country as well as the people. 
He thought Dublin **a noble city," and the life 
there "magnificent." He visited a number of 
country seats, and saw some rich and well-culti- 
vated land. He planned, before his return, to 
visit Lough Neach and the Giants' Causeway. 




Boswe/l hi Corsiaiii Attire 

III tlie dress of an armed Corsican Cliief, as he appeared at Shakespeare's Jubilee 

at Stratford-on-Avon, September, ITBH, tlie year follow ins: his publication of 

" An Account of Corsica " 



WOOING A WIFE 161 

He would like, he said, to come back and see a 
"great deal more of Hibernia." 

But what of Mary Anne? A study of this 
young lady in her native land does not seem in any 
way to have diminished her charms. During this 
period no letters were written to Temple, so that 
we miss the opportunity to follow every shift in the 
lover's mood. But the confidences reposed in Sir 
Alexander Dick are no less frank, though much 
less voluminous. 

I must not forget la belle Irlandaise, who is really as 
amiable as I told you I thought her. Only figure me 
dancing a jig (or strathspey) with her to the tune of 
Carrickfergus, played by an Irish piper. 

This, I regret to say, is the last of Boswell's 
utterances about the Irish beauty. What it was 
that cooled the ardour of the young people we do 
not know; we must await the discovery of other 
letters written in the early summer of 1769. Per- 
haps the parents put an end to the affair. Be this 
as it may, before the month of June was out, Bos- 
well was engaged to be married to his cousin, 
Margaret Montgomery, who had accompanied him 
on the Irish expedition. 

Could anything be more unexpected .? Hitherto, 
in Boswell's correspondence, Margaret had been 
a mere lay figure; not once is she mentioned in 
connexion with love. She was a quiet and admira- 



162 YOUNG BOSWELL 

ble person, of whom BoswelFs elders must have 
approved. They must have deemed her an emi- 
nently safe person — was she not a cousin ? She 
was not a foreign woman, who would introduce a 
strange note into the society of Auchinleck; she 
was not wealthy, but she would do. It was really 
essential to get James married off. Since his 
return from the Continent, his life had been grow- 
ing ever looser. There was need of a steady, fem- 
inine hand. Therefore, it would seem, they took 
care to throw him with Margaret, trusting in the 
efiFect of propinquity. Even before the expedition 
to Ireland, Boswell speaks to Sir Alexander of Miss 
Montgomery as sitting by him while he writes. 
Sir Alexander himself lent his influence to the 
plans that the family were working out. He told 
Boswell that he would find his cousin's conversa- 
tion "nutritive," and the word pleased the young 
man. "Indeed it is such as nourished me," he 
replied, " and like sweet milk tempers and smooths 
my agitated mind." 

Mrs. Boswell was one of those kindly, long- 
suffering women whose lives are a quiet blessing 
to men; unhonoured by the world, but eternally 
dear to a few who are privileged to be near them. 
Through a long wedded life, through years in 
which bitterness must have been her portion, she 
was a devoted wife to Boswell. He loved her, and 



WOOING A WIFE 163 

after her death never ceased, in his own garrulous 
fashion, to lament her loss. 

But her husband's ways were not her ways. His 
enthusiasms she could not share. It is to be feared 
that his restless hero-hunting was to her a source 
of shame. At the very best, it could have seemed 
no better to her than the eccentric taste of a man 
who collects exotic animals as pets. "She dis- 
approved," says Boswell, "of my inviting Mr. 

M sh, a man of ability but of violent manners, 

to make one in a genteel party at our house one 
evening. 'He is,' said she, 'like fire and water, 
useful but not to be brought into company.'" 
Mrs. Boswell was not interested in making social 
experiments, in mixing different kinds. She would 
never have seated Samuel Johnson and John 
Wilkes at the same table. In a word, she never 
really understood what her husband was about, 
and never assisted him in developing that very 
strange variety of genius which Nature had be- 
stowed upon him. 

Just at the end of Boswell's Commonplace Book 
there is a sheet headed, "Uxoriana." It is one of 
the most pathetic pages ever traced by his cheerful 
pen, for it is his attempt to Boswellise his wife. 
Its pathos, to my mind, consists in its brevity 
— there are but four anecdotes set down, and 
they are dull. There was in the lady nothing to 



164 YOUNG BOSWELL 

Boswellise. Did he ever, I wonder, in the long 
dull evenings at Edinburgh and at Auchinleck, let 
his mind wander back to the Utrecht days, and 
to a young woman who had told him that she 
did not have the talent to become a subaltern in 
his life ? 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE SOCIAL GENIUS OF BOSWELL 

I SUPPOSE that the simplest manifestation of 
social genius is a desire of getting people together 
and exposing them to one another. Our interest 
in drama and novel consists largely in seeing people 
whom we know brought into contact with strange 
or hostile persons, so that they may exhibit or de- 
velop new sides of themselves. It is hard to in- 
terest a reader in the unbroken serenities of family 
life. It is hard for social genius to content itself 
with the domestic circle. A man endowed with 
such a genius is perpetually hankering after "new 
faces, other minds" ; he finds in clubs and crowded 
drawing-rooms a varied and coloured life which puts 
to shame the modest pleasures of solitude and 
meditation. 

All intellectual improvement arises, perhaps, 
from submitting ourselves to men and to ways of 
life that are originally alien to us ; if, in time, they 
get the better of our conservatism, our life is 
clearly the better for the enrichment they have 
given it ; but if, on the other hand, we are in the 
end obliged to repudiate them, we retire with the 
renewed strength that arises from opposition. 



166 YOUNG BOSWELL 

and our second state is better than our first. If 
you happen, for example, to disHke Frenchmen, it 
would, according to this philosophy, be well for 
you to go and live among Frenchmen until you dis- 
cover whether you are right. If you find yourself 
becoming a snob or a Pharisee, it might be well for 
you to go among criminals and mendicants, until 
you realise the fascination of the irregular life. An 
hour's experience in such matters is worth more 
than a year of meditations. 

Of this philosophy of exposure James Bos well 
was ever an ardent disciple. He loved friction 
— the excitement which arises from the sudden 
contact of rivals, the collision of opponents, ill- 
assorted companies : Jove among peasants, Samuel 
Johnson in the Hebrides. ' He let his imagination 
play with the thought of bringing Rousseau and 
Voltaire together. In his youth he went into the 
company of actors and of Roman Catholics, be- 
cause actors and Roman Catholics were not ap- 
proved of by the stern society in which he had 
been reared ; in his maturer years he courted the 
acquaintance of the notorious Mrs. Margaret 
Caroline Rudd, who had barely escaped from the 
fangs of the law when the Perreau brothers were 
hanged for forgery; and he rode to the place of 
execution with the Reverend Mr. Hackman, the 
murderer. 



BOSWELL'S SOCIAL GENIUS 167 

Over these incidents tte biographers and critics 
of Bos well have made merry, or wagged their heads 
with indignation. There is, however, something 
to be said for knowing human nature, even in its 
most unpopular, or even criminal, manifestations ; 
one may hazard the opinion that the critics them- 
selves would be the wiser for some knowledge of 
the unconventional life. What if Boswell did 
write an amatory song to Mrs. Rudd.^^ It was 
because he felt her charm ; and I do not doubt that 
she had more of it than all the bluestockings and 
dowagers in Scotland. Johnson himself envied 
Boswell his acquaintance with Mrs. Rudd. 

There were, Boswell discovered, easy ways of 
introducing into conversation this necessary fric- 
tion. One can always take the other side, whether 
he belongs on it or not. One can always affect 
ignorance or prejudice. This was, from the begin- 
ning, one of his favourite methods of drawing a man 
out. *'I ventured," he writes of Paoli, "to reason 
like a libertine, that I might be confirmed in virtu- 
ous principles by so illustrious a preceptour. I 
made light of moral feelings. I argued that con- 
science was vague and uncertain ; that there was 
hardly any vice but what men might be found who 
have been guilty of it without remorse." This 
from the man who wrote reams of the most excel- 
lent counsel to Zelide ! Yet, in the midst of his 


















Boswell's Inscription in a copy qf Anthony Homec¥s The Fire qf 
the Altar, or Certain Directions how to raise the Soul into Certain 
Flames i before, at, and after the Receiving the Blessed Sacrament^' 



BOSWELL'S SOCIAL GENIUS 169 

sermon to Zelide, he had cried out, "Defend your- 
self. Tell me that I am the severe Cato." 

The record of Johnson's conversation teems with 
illustrations of Boswell's skill in starting or direct- 
ing the flow of talk. When Johnson expatiated 
on the advantages to Scotland of the union with 
England, Boswell himself was delighted with the 
"copious exaggeration" of the talk, but he feared 
the effect of it on the Scotch listeners. "I there- 
fore," says he, "diverted the subject." He talked 
with Mr. Gerard on the "difference of genius," 
for the express purpose of engaging him and John- 
son in a discussion of the subject. On another 
occasion he wrote : "A strange thought struck me, 
to try if he knew anything of . . . the trade of 
a butcher. I enticed him into the subject." 

Again, he was eternally asking questions. How 
else, pray, is one to discover the extent of an- 
other's conversation ? Recall that fascinating vision 
which he summoned up, of Johnson shut into a 
tower with a new-born baby. "Sir, what would 
you do.f* Would you take the trouble of rearing 
it ? Would you teach it anything ? " And (doubt- 
less as growing out of this very subject), "Is 
natural affection born with us ? Is marriage natu- 
ral to man ?" Here is an interlocutor by no means 
profound, but eager and curious, full of novel 
expedients for waking his subject into activity, 



170 YOUNG BOSWELL 

spurring, enticing, decoying him, and playing the 
fool before him. 

I also [he wrote] may be allowed to claim some merit 
in leading the conversation. I do not mean leading, 
as in an orchestra, by playing the first fiddle ; but lead- 
ing as one does in examining a witness — starting 
topics, and making him pursue them. 

It is a felicitous comparison. Boswell had the in- 
genuity of a lawyer trained in cross-examination 
and in wringing a subject dry. There is much 
also in the musical metaphor which he abandons- 
He is very like a performer on a musical instru- 
ment. By skilful manipulation, he plays upon 
men so as to display all that is most characteristic 
in them. Of this peculiar skill he was fully aware, 
and loved to analyse it. He had learned, for ex- 
ample, how to play upon John Wilkes, and he so 
far divulged the secret as to write thus to the man 
himself : — 

Philosophy can analyse human nature, and from 
every man of parts can extract a certain quantity of 
good. Dare I affirm that I have found chearfulness, 
knowledge, wit, and generosity even in Mr. Wilkes ? I 
suppose few crucibles are so happily constructed as 
mine, and I imagine that I have a particular talent for 
finding the gold in your Honour's composition. Cer- 
tain it is that the process must be performed very deli- 
cately. 



BOSWELL'S SOCIAL GENIUS 171 

Another passage on the same theme makes use 
of a metaphor much less feHcitous, but is certainly 
of value in showing the conscious art of which Bos- 
well was the master. It is drawn from the Com- 
monplace Book, and reads : — 

My friends are to me like the cinnamon tree, which 
produces nutmeg, mace, and cinnamon; not only do I 
get wisdom and worth out of them, but amusement. I 
use them as the Chinese do their animals; nothing is 
lost ; there is a very good dish made of the poorest parts. 
So I make the follies of my friends serve as a dessert 
after their valuable qualities. 

Of the splendour of this endowment it is perhaps 
hardly necessary to speak. To influence men in 
such a way as to bring into life whatever is most 
characteristic ; to appreciate and elicit whatever is 
best in the man before you ; to make his true qual- 
ities triumph over his inertia and his convention- 
ality, is, in the fullest sense, surely a creative act. 
Boswell could almost boast that he taught men to 
know themselves. 

Because of this more serious purpose, he cared 
but little for mere pyrotechnical display in conver- 
sation. There were, in his immediate circle, three 
men famous for epigrams and bons mots, — Beau- 
clerk, Garrick, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, — 
yet he never cared to make a collection of their 
witty remarks. Wit, of course, he delighted in; 



172 YOUNG BOSWELL 

but the highest form of wit is that in which it 
blends with wisdom, and in which it leads the in- 
quirer on to a subtler consideration of the subject, 
or provides a sharp summary of it in some flash of 
inspiration. In Corsica, Paoli had said to him, 
"Je ne puis souffrir longtemps les diseurs de bons 
mots" ; whereupon Boswell comments : — 

How much superiour is this great man's idea of 
agreeable conversation to that of professed wits, who 
are continually straining for smart remarks and lively 
repartees. They put themselves to much pain in order 
to please, and yet please less than if they would just 
appear as they naturally feel themselves. A company 
of professed wits has always appeared to me like a 
company of artificers employed in some very nice and 
diflScult work, which they are under a necessity of per- 
forming. 

It is because of this neglect of mere repartee that 
the conversation recorded by Boswell never im- 
presses the reader as a jest-book or a collection of 
unset jewels. There is plenty of relief. It is his 
glory to have given us the gem in its setting. 

For a somewhat similar reason there is in his 
letters a lack of mere news. He is not a great 
letter-writer, for letter-writing to him is seldom an 
end in itself. He usually has some secondary pur- 
pose in mind. He may wish to ask a favour, or, 
as in conversation, to draw out the real man. 



BOSWELL'S SOCIAL GENIUS 173 

The following letter to Goldsmith, never before 
printed, is an excellent example of the art I have 
been attempting to define. It was written im- 
mediately after news of the first performance of 
"She Stoops to Conquer" had reached Boswell 
in Scotland. The success of the piece had vastly 
enhanced Goldsmith's reputation, and Boswell 
was filled with longing to witness and record the 
triumph, to get into correspondence with the new 
dramatist, to persuade him to write him a letter 
spontaneously — and that quickly, "as if in repar- 
tee." There is no telling what may come of such 
a correspondence. Perhaps he had not been quite 
fair to Goldsmith, who may respond, in the hour of 
success, to the Boswellian stimulus. Who knows 
but what he may yet wish to Boswellise him ? 

But no. Goldsmith was no letter- writer. Spec- 
imens of his letters are of unexampled rarity. 
His published correspondence does not extend to 
forty letters. He had no time for letter writing — 
least of all with Boswell. He had time only for 
Newbery. But this makes all the more, interesting 
the following example, which, so far as known, is 
the only letter that ever passed between them. 

It begins with a description of the character- 
isation of sentimental comedy, upon which "She 
Stoops to Conquer" had been an attack. It would 
be difl5cult, I think, in the range of criticism to find 












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Facsimile of Letter qf Congratulation 

Written by Boswell to Goldsmith on the happy coincidence of the first production 
of " She Stoops to ConQucr " and the birth of his own daughter 



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178 YOUNG BOSWELL 

a more sprightly account of the comedie larmoyante 
of the eighteenth century. 

Edinburgh, 29 March 1773. 
Dear Sir, — 

I sincerely wish you joy on the great success of 
your new comedy. She stoops to conquer, or the 
mistakes of a night. The English Nation was just 
falling into a lethargy. Their blood was thickened 
and their minds creamed and mantled like a standing 
pool; and no wonder — when their Comedies which 
should enliven them, like sparkling Champagne, were 
become mere syrup of poppies gentle, soporifick 
draughts. Had there been no interruption to this, our 
audiences must have gone to the Theatres with their 
night caps. In the opera houses abroad, the Boxes are 
fitted up for teadrinking. Those at Drury Lane & 
Covent Garden must have been furnished with settees, 
and commodiously adjusted for repose. I am happy 
to hear that you have waked the spirit of mirth which 
has so long layn dormant, and revived natural humour 
and hearty laughter. It gives me pleasure that our 
friend Garrick has written the Prologue for you. It is 
at least lending you a Postilion, since you have not his 
coach; and I think it is a very good one, admirably 
adapted both to the Subject and to the Authour of 
the Comedy. 

There is reference here to the fact that "She 
Stoops to Conquer" was performed, not at Gar- 
rick's theatre, the Drury Lane, but at the Covent 
Garden. Of this fact Walpole wrote sneeringly : 



BOSWELL'S SOCIAL GENIUS 179 

" Garrick would not act it, but bought himself off 
with a poor prologue." Boswell, however, liked 
what Walpole detested, and was glad Goldsmith 
might have a prologue by Garrick if he could not have 
the advantage of a production at the Drury Lane 
under the personal supervision of his famous friend. 

The next paragraph furnishes a specimen of 
Boswell's humour than which none is better. 

You must know my wife was safely delivered of 
a daughter, the very evening that She stoops to con- 
quer first appeared. I am fond of the coincidence. 
My little daughter is a fine healthy lively child, and 
I flatter myseK shall be blest with the cheerfullness of 
your Comick Muse. She has nothing of that wretched 
whining and crying which we see children so often have ; 
nothing of the Comedie Larmoyante. I hope she shall live 
to be an agreable companion, and to diffuse gay ety over 
the days of her father, which are sometimes a little cloudy. 

I intend being in London this spring, and promise 
myself great satisfaction in sharing your social hours. 
In the mean time, I beg the favour of hearing from you. 
I am sure you have not a warmer friend or a steadier 
admirer. While you are in the full glow of Theatrical 
Splendour, while all the great and the gay in the British 
metropolis are literally hanging upon your smiles, let 
me see that you can stoop to write to me. 

I ever am, with great regard. Dear Sir, 

Your affectionate, humble servant, 

James Boswell. 
My address is James's Court, Edinburgh. 
Pray write directly. Write as if in repartee. 






180 YOUNG BOSWELL 

The high opinion which I have expressed of 
Boswell's influence will seem to many extreme ; but 
in any critical essay on Boswell, it is necessary to 
account for a unique thing — his genius. An ex- 
ceptionally high estimate is indispensable if one 
is to account for genius. And yet there would be 
something quite inadequate in the analysis if we 
stopped here. We must beware of neglecting what 
Boswell called his "romantic imagination." Bos- 
well's wayward imagination might almost be taken 
as an illustration of Keats's injunction ever to let 
the fancy roam. He was particularly fond of im- 
agining himself in romantic circumstances. 

Readers of the "Life of Johnson" will not have 
forgotten the evening on which Johnson and Bos- 
well listened to a fiddler at Ashbourne. "I told 
him," writes Boswell, "that it [the power of music] 
afiPected me to such a degree as often to agitate my 
nerves painfully, producing in my mind alternate 
sensations of pathetick dejection, so that I was 
ready to shed tears, and of daring resolution, so 
that I was inclined to rush into the thickest part 
of the battle." 

Boswell was plainly right in calling this "roman- 
tic." If Rousseau had written the sentence, or 
Berlioz, it would have been cited as a typical illus- 
tration of glorious self-abandonment to exalted, 
perhaps unearthly, emotions. Johnson's reply, 



BOSWELL'S SOCIAL GENIUS 181 

"Sir, I should never hear it if it made me such a 
fool," shows that he was no wiser than the rest of 
the world in interpreting this fantastic quality of 
Boswell's. Boswell had, at times, longings worthy 
of a Byron. He confided — rashly — to Johnson 
that he was sometimes in the humour of wishing to 
retire to a "desart" ; and he wrote to Temple that 
he could be " whinstone on the face of a mountain," 
were it possible for him to be conscious of it and 
to "brave the elements by glorious insensibility." 
There is a typical bit of romanticism, full half a 
century before Byron cried aloud to the Alpine 
night, — 

Let me be 
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight, 
A portion of the tempest and of thee. 

After dining with Captain Cook, Boswell felt a 
desire to join him on his next expedition, and per- 
haps circumnavigate the globe. At another time 
he longed to go and see the Great Wall of China. 
However truly Boswell may be the exponent of 
the Age of Prose and its crowded life in salon and 
club, he was no less a child of the Romantic Move- 
ment. And he who does not realise that Boswell's 
love of the civilisation of his own time is for ever 
crossed and altered by strange yearnings after 
something larger, simpler, and more emotional has 
utterly failed to understand him. To say that this 



182 YOUNG BOSWELL 

was inconsistent is but to assert once more that 
it was romantic. ^ 

As for himself, he realised it as fully as might be. 
Indeed, he never tired of talking about it ; but the 
people among whom he lived did not suffer from 
incomprehensible romantic longings for a larger 
experience. His own description of this side of 
his mind will be found in the Commonplace Book. 

Boswell, who had a good deal of whim, used not only 
to form wild projects in his imagination, but would 
sometimes reduce them to practice. In his calm hours, 
he said, with great good humour, "There have been 
many people who built castles in the air, but I believe 
I am the first that ever attempted to live in them." 

It will be remembered that he told Rousseau that 
he often formed "des plans romanesques, jamais 
des plans impossibles." 

One of Boswell's plans that was almost realised 
was a "scheme of going up the Baltick." Johnson 
was inclined to it, and Boswell never forgave him- 
self for not carrying it out. His words of regret 
are characteristic of him in more ways than one : — 

I am sorry now that I did not insist on our executing 
that scheme. Besides the other objects of curiosity 
and observation, to have seen my illustrious friend 
received, as he probably would have been, by a Prince 
so eminently distinguished for his variety of talents and 
acquisitions as the late King of Sweden; and by the 



BOSWELL'S SOCIAL GENIUS 183 

Empress of Russia, whose extraordinary abilities, in- 
formation, and magnanimity astonish the world, would 
have afforded a noble subject for contemplation and 
record. The reflection may possibly be thought too 
visionary by the more sedate and cold-blooded part of 
my readers ; yet I own, I frequently indulge it with an 
earnest, unavailing regret. 

But it is not necessary to accept BoswelFs state- 
ment that he alone attempted to go and live in his 
Spanish castles. Have not the greatest dreamers 
always done so.^^ Is not every great achievement 
a bit romantic in its first conception .^^ Certainly 
it is true that every one of Boswell's achievements 
was, in the beginning, a somewhat crack-brained 
dream. It was foolish and visionary for him, at 
the age of twenty-one, to dream of becoming the 
intimate companion of the King of Letters in 
London — and the dream came true. It was a 
crazy notion to go to Corsica when it was in a state 
of insurrection, in order to scrape acquaintance 
with the rebel leader and interpret his plans to the 
world ; therefore he went and did it. It was rash, 
almost to the verge of madness, to take Dr. Sam- 
uel Johnson, aged sixty-four, on a jaunt to Ultima 
Thule ; but he did it — to the delight of the world. 
And so it is important for those who call Boswell a 
fool to sit down and meditate on the whole nature 
of folly. Unless they are prepared to deny his 



184 YOUNG BOSWELL 

genius altogether, they must reaUse that it was in- 
separably bound up with this romantic folly of his, 
which, when its airy castles prove to be of solid 
substance, has a very different look. 

To realise one of his dreams was to Boswell the 
keenest delight in the world. At such a moment 
his spirit knew no bounds. When, for example, 
he had got Johnson into a hackney-coach en route 
for the Wilkes dinner, he "exulted as much as a 
fortune-hunter who has got an heiress into a post- 
chaise with him to set out for Gretna-Green." 
When he realised that he had actually got Johnson 
to the Hebrides, his elation was so great that he 
compared himself to *'a dog who has got hold of a 
large piece of meat, and runs away with it to a 
corner, where he may devour it in peace." An 
illustration of what he himself called his "avidity 
for delight" may be given from a letter addressed 
to Samuel Johnson from the town of Chester. He 
was on his way down to Scotland, and had stopped 
to visit his friend. Colonel Stuart. Here the fas- 
cination of the martial life mingled with the dig- 
nity of the ecclesiastical life (for he was graciously 
received by Bishop Porteus) to produce a very 
draught of "mortal felicity." 

Your letter, so full of polite kindness and masterly 
counsel, came like a large treasure upon me, while 
already glittering with riches. I was quite enchanted 



BOSWELL'S SOCIAL GENIUS 185 

at Chester, so that I could with difficulty quit it. But 
the enchantment was the reverse of that of Circe, for 
so far was there from being any thing sensual in it, that 
I was all mind. I do not mean all reason only ; for my 
fancy was kept finely in play. And why not ? — If you 
please I will send you a copy, or an abridgement of my 
Chester journal, which is truly a log-book of felicity. 

There is in this quotation every characteristic 
mark of Boswell's genius. He has, to begin with, 
met everybody in Chester. He has received a 
letter from Samuel Johnson, which he has of course 
shown to the Bishop, and has become at once "the 
Great Man." He has filled his mind by conver- 
sation with the great, and yet he has fed his fancy 
as well as his reason. And finally, he has got a 
record of it all. No wonder he was in such spirits 
that he hoped to be able to vanquish even the 
black dog of melancholy that would meet him at 
home. 

It was this well-spring of gaiety that recom- 
mended Boswell to his friends. He reckoned with 
it as one of his chief qualities. There was not 
much, in the eyes of the great, to recommend the 
young man, and he knew it. Therefore he made 
the more skilful use of such endowments as he 
possessed. It will be remembered that, when he 
was first admitted to the presence of Paoli, the 
General could not understand why the young man 



186 YOUNG BOSWELL 

was there ; he suspected the presence of a spy, and 
was on his guard. But Boswell disarmed him at 
last. He talked flatteringly about a possible alli- 
ance between Britain and Corsica. "I insensibly 
got the better of his reserve upon this head. My 
flow of gay ideas relaxed his severity and bright- 
ened up his humour." 

It was to this perpetual good humour that Bos- 
well owed all his social success. The social honour 
that he coveted most, election to the great Literary 
Club, he owed to this. In the remoteness of the 
Highlands Johnson confessed to Boswell that 
several had wished to keep him out of the Club. 
"Burke told me, he doubted if you were fit for it; 
but, now you are in, none of them are sorry. Burke 
says that you have so much good humour naturally, 
it is scarce a virtue." 

Nobody is likely to accuse Samuel Johnson of 
being a flatterer, yet he told Boswell that he was a 
man whom everybody liked. The harsh criticism 
of him, as insolent and pushing, comes from people 
who were never sufficiently in contact with him to 
be won by his infectious gaiety. It may, indeed, 
be doubted whether there are any social restric- 
tions that will not go down before indomitable 
good humour. Under its warm influence pride 
of place is forgotten, and mortals permit them- 
selves to take pleasure in one another rather than 



BOSWELL'S SOCIAL GENIUS 187 

in the barriers which they have reared about their 
self-importance. 

Two excellent examples of this power of Bos- 
well's are set down by Fanny Burney in her 
"Diary." Few persons were more adequately 
equipped with a sense of etiquette than the flut- 
tering little lady whose diary is greater than any 
of her novels. The first anecdote was written at 
the time when she was enslaved at Windsor, wear- 
ing her life out in curtsying to Queen Charlotte and 
answering the idiotic questions of King George. 
Boswell, like the rest of Miss Burney's friends, had 
grown indignant at this, and determined, even at 
the cost of scandal, to release her from her confine- 
ment. Boswell, who had known her well at 
Streatham in the days before Johnson's death, 
approached her through the Reverend Mr. Gif- 
fardier, whose acquaintance we made in the sec- 
ond chapter of this book, and whom Miss Burney 
always called by the sobriquet of Mr. Turbulent. 

[Mr. Turbulent] proposed bringing him to call upon 
me; but this I declined, certain how little satisfaction 
would be given here by the entrance of a man so famous 
for compiling anecdotes. But yet I really wished to see 
him again for old acquaintance' sake, and unavoidable 
amusement from his oddity and good humour, as well 
as respect for the object of his constant admiration, my 
revered Dr. Johnson. I therefore told Mr. Turbulent 



188 YOUNG BOSWELL 

I should be extremely glad to speak with him after the 
service was over. 

Accordingly, at the gate of the choir, Mr. Turbulent 
brought him to me. We saluted with mutual glee; 
his comic-serious face and manner have lost nothing of 
their wonted singularity, nor yet have his mind and 
language, as you will soon confess. 

"I am extremely glad to see you, indeed," he cried, 
"but very sorry to see you here. My dear ma'am, why 
do you stay ? — it won't do, ma'am ! you must resign ! 
— we can put up with it no longer. I told my good 
host, the Bishop, so last night ; we are all grown quite 
outrageous ! " 

Whether I laughed the most or stared the most, I am 
at a loss to say. 

The conversation is much longer than this ; but 
as it is familiar to many readers, it need not be re- 
produced in its entirety. Boswell attempted to 
enlist Miss Burney's assistance in the collection of 
material for the "Life of Johnson," but she did not 
feel that she could give it. The publication of the 
book, in 1791, shocked and grieved her by its 
frankness. She was angry at the author, and 
remained so until she finally met him at Mrs. Ord's, 
where he was the guest of honour at dinner. 

This last [Mr. Boswell] was the object of the morning. 
I felt a strong sensation of that displeasure which his 
loquacious communications of every weakness and in- 
firmity of the first and greatest good man of these times 



BOSWELL'S SOCIAL GENIUS 189 

have awakened in me at his first sight ; and though his 
address to me was courteous in the extreme, and he 
made a point of sitting next me, I felt an indignant 
disposition to a nearly forbidding reserve and silence. 
. . . Angry, however, as I have long been with him, he 
soon insensibly conquered, though he did not soften me. 
There is so little of ill-design or ill-nature in him, he is 
so open and forgiving for all that is said in return, that 
he soon forced me to consider him in a less serious light, 
and change my resentment against his treachery into 
something like commiseration of his levity ; and before 
we parted, we became good friends. There is no resist- 
ing great good-humour, be what will in the opposite scale. 

He entertained us all as if hired for that purpose, 
telling stories of Dr. Johnson, and acting them with in- 
cessant buffoonery. I told him frankly that if he 
turned him into ridicule by caricature, I should fly the 
premises ; he assured me he would not, and, indeed, his 
imitations, though comic to excess, were so far from 
caricature that he omitted a thousand gesticulations 
which I distinctly remember. 

Mr. Langton told some stories himself in imitation 
of Dr. Johnson, but they became him less than Mr. 
Boswell. 

I think it would be a mistake to conceive of Bos- 
well's gaiety as a mere flow of animal spirits ; he 
himself would, it is more likely, have called it a 
"relish of existence." For "parties of pleasure," 
as he called meetings designed to stimulate the 
animal spirits, he had, he insisted, no "ardent 
love." He "tasted" experience and association 



190 YOUNG BOSWELL 

as a connoisseur tastes old wine. Perhaps no man 
ever lived whose senses were more exquisitely 
alive to the manifold joys of social existence. In 
the course of an ill-ordered life he did many a fool- 
ish thing : he talked too much about himself, and 
babbled of his melancholy to all who listened ; he 
was vain, and, I fear, he was sensual ; moreover, 
he was frequently and increasingly drunk. But 
he never insulted his Creator by regarding life as a 
dull and uninteresting business. 

The consummate proof of Boswell's delight in 
social life is of course his abiding habit of recording 
it. He was dissatisfied with mere reminiscence. 
He would not trust to his memory, marvelous 
though his memory was. He wanted as full and 
accurate an account of life as it was possible to set 
down. One of the most delightful and telling of 
his remarks is found near the opening of the "Life 
of Johnson," in which he speaks of his desire that 
the reader should "Hve o'er each scene" with 
Johnson, that he might as it were "see him live" ; 
and then adds, "Had his other friends been as 
diligent and ardent as I was, he might have been 
almost completely preserved." 









Inscription in BoswelVs copy qfjaussin^s Memoire de la Corse " 
the hest-knowii account qf Corsica brfore BoswelPs 



CHAPTER IX 
JOURNAL-KEEPING AND JOURNAL-PUBLISHING 

How did Boswell take his notes ? Did he take 
them on the spot, or did he write them up after- 
wards? Are we to think of him as sitting about 
the drawing-rooms of the eighteenth century, 
scratching away Hke a stenographer ? Such ques- 
tions, I think, the reader of the "Life of Johnson" 
is always asking himself. They are natural, but 
are not entirely easy to answer. 

In the first place, most of the prima-facie evi- 
dence is lost. The notes on which the books were 
based have, in general, perished. In his will Bos- 
well made the following provision for the publica- 
tion of the materials preserved in the "cabinet" at 
Auchinleck : "I hereby leave to the said Sir Wil- 
liam Forbes, the Reverend Mr. Temple and Ed- 
mond Malone, Esquire, all my manuscripts of my 
own composition, and all my letters from various 
persons, to be published for the benefit of my 
younger children, as they shall decide, that is to 
say, they are to have a discretionary power to 
publish more or less." 

The three executors seem to have lacked interest 
or initiative. They never met. All that we know 



THE BOSWELL JOURNALS 193 

of their rather shocking neglect of duty is derived 
from the remarks of the Reverend Dr. Rogers, 
one of the earlier biographers of Boswell, who ap- 
pears to have had access to some private family 
information. He says: "The three persons nom- 
inated as literary executors did not meet, and the 
entire business of the trust was administered by 
Sir William Forbes, Bart., who appointed as his 
law-agent, Robert Boswell, Writer to the Signet, 
cousin-german of the deceased. By that gentle- 
man's advice, Boswell's manuscripts were left to 
the disposal of his family; and it is believed that 
the whole were immediately destroyed." Com- 
ment on such action would be superfluous. 

Two of the journals, at least, escaped the flames. 
One was the so-called Commonplace Book, from 
which quotations have been often drawn in these 
essays, and the other was one of the journals used 
in the composition of the "Life of Johnson." The 
manuscript of the former I have never seen ; it is, 
perhaps, lost. It was published in 1874, and has 
long been familiar to scholars. The original must 
have been either a note-book, in which entries were 
made at widely-separated intervals, or, perhaps, a 
series of loose sheets kept together in a portfolio. 
Although the order of the entries is strangely con- 
fused, there is some semblance of sequence. The 
earliest anecdotes belong to the year 1763, and the 



194 YOUNG BOSWELL 

latest date recorded is 1785. It covers, therefore, 
the most interesting period of Boswell's hfe. 

It is clear that the book was not one of those in- 
tended for publication, or even regarded as mate- 
rial to be written up for publication. But it is no 
less significant and valuable, since it affords us a 
strictly personal view. It is, in truth, what it has 
generally been called — a commonplace book, from 
which, on occasion, the author might draw an 
anecdote or a mot. 

The other note-book is of a very different kind. 
It is, as has been said, one of the journals used in 
writing the "Life of Johnson." It was filled up 
at two different periods. In the first place, it 
contains, set down in chronological order, the 
facts in Johnson's boyhood and life at Oxford that 
Boswell had been able to learn from Miss Porter, 
Johnson's step-daughter. Dr. Adams, Mr. Hector, 
and others, during a visit to Ashbourne, Lichfield, 
and Oxford in March, 1776. This entry is con- 
tinuous and chronological, covering Johnson's life 
down to his departure for London. An anecdote 
from Dr. Percy is added ; and then, in the month of 
April, after the return to London, notes on John- 
son's relations with Tom Hervey, contributed by 
Beauclerk, and Langton's account of Johnson's 
dispute with Dr. Barnard, Dean of Derry. All 
this, it will be noticed, is material that had been 









s^ ^ 














Facsimile of a pagejrom BoswelVs Note-book, 1776 y 
showing material later used in the Life 



196 YOUNG BOSWELL 

communicated to Boswell by friends of Johnson. 
Thus far the note-book is not the record of John- 
son's conversation as heard by Boswell. It con- 
sists of data which will be of use to Boswell in 
writing those periods of Johnson's life of which he 
has not had personal knowledge. 

But the most interesting feature of this note- 
book remains to be mentioned. In September of 
the following year, Boswell made another visit to 
Ashbourne, where Johnson was visiting his friend. 
Dr. Taylor, and carried this same note-book with 
him, partly in order to correct or amplify what he 
had recorded in the previous year, and partly to 
note anything of importance that Johnson might 
say. When writing in the previous year, he had 
left half a page blank for future correction; and 
now, in 1777, he fills up some of this space. In 
the example reproduced on page 195, the note 
written lengthwise of the sheet has to do with an 
earlier page than the one shown in the cut. The 
correction is so elaborate that it has been continued 
from page to page. 

By a happy chance, Boswell also used this note- 
book — as he had certainly not originally intended 
to do — to record a conversation which he had with 
Johnson one evening at Ashbourne; and thus we 
are provided with one example — the sole surviv- 
ing one — of the notes which Boswell used for one 



THE BOSWELL JOURNALS 



197 



of the important conversations in the "Life." 
Because of this unique value, the notes are here 
reproduced side by side with the corresponding 
passage, based on them, in the "Life." 



Note-book 
I mentioned the "doom 
of man," Unhappiness, in 
his "Vanity of human 
Wishes"; but observed 
that things were done 
upon the supposition of 
happiness. Grand houses 
were built, fine grardens 
[sic] made. He said these 
were all struggles for hap- 
piness. He said the first 
view of Ranelagh gave an 
expansion and gay sensa- 
tion to his mind that 
nothing else had done; 
but As Xerxes wept to 
think that n°^* one of his 
great army would be alive 
years after, he thought 
that there was not one in 
the brilliant crowd at Rane- 
lagh that was not afraid 
to go home and think. 
The thoughts of each In- 



"Life," vol. Ill, page 1981 
I talked to him of mis- 
ery being "the doom of 
man" in this life, as dis- 
played in his "Vanity of 
Human Wishes." Yet I 
observed that things were 
done upon the supposi- 
tion of happiness ; grand 
houses were built, fine 
gardens were made, splen- 
did places of publick 
amusement were con- 
trived, and crowded 
with company. 

Johnson. "Alas, Sir, 
these are all only struggles 
for happiness. When I 
first entered Ranelagh, it 
gave an expansion and gay 
sensation to my mind, 
such as I never experi- 
enced any where else. But, 
as Xerxes wept when he 
viewed his immense army. 



Birkbeck Hill's edition : Oxford, 1887. 



198 



YOUNG BOSAVELL 



dividual there would be 
distressing when alone. 



I said that being in love 
or having some fine pro- 
ject for next day might 
preserve felicity. He ad- 
mitted there might be 
such instances. But in 
general his conclusion was 
just. I Myself have never 



and considered that not 
one of that great multi- 
tude would be alive a hun- 
dred years afterwards, so 
it went to my heart to con- 
sider that there was not 
one in all that brilliant 
circle that was not afraid 
to go home and think; 
but that the thoughts of 
each individual would be 
distressing when alone." 

This reflection was ex- 
perimentally just. The 
feeling of languor, which 
succeeds the animation of 
gaiety, is itself a very 
severe pain ; and when the 
mind is then vacant, a 
thousand disappointments 
and vexations rush in and 
excruciate. Will not many 
even of my fairest read- 
ers allow this to be true ? 

I suggested, that being 
in love, and flattered with 
hopes of success ; or hav- 
ing some favourite scheme 
in view for the next day, 
might prevent that wretch- 
edness of which we had 
been talking. 



THE BOSWELL JOURNALS 



199 



been more miserable than 
after Ranelagh, when un- 
occupied & alone in my 
lodgings, and I suppose 
almost all the beautiful 
Ladies whom I have ad- 
mired there have suffered 
then as I did. 



He said he did not 
imagine that all would be 
made clear to us immedi- 
ately after death ; but that 
the ways of Providence 
would be explained very 
gradually. 



Johnson. "Why, Sir, it 
may sometimes be so as 
you suppose ; but my con- 
clusion is in general but 
too true.'* 

While Johnson and I 
stood in calm conference 
by ourselves in Dr. Tay- 
lor's garden, at a pretty 
late hour in a serene au- 
tumn night, looking up to 
the heavens, I directed 
the discourse to the sub- 
ject of a future state. My 
friend was in a placid and 
most benignant frame. 
"Sir, (said he,) I do not 
imagine that all things 
will be made clear to us 
immediately after death, 
but that the ways of Prov- 
idence will be explained 
to us very gradually." I 
ventured to ask him 
whether, although the 
words of some texts of 
Scripture seemed strong 
in support of the dreadful 
doctrine of an eternity of 
punishment, we might not 
hope that the denuncia- 
tion was figurative, and 



200 



YOUNG BOSWELL 



He said he did not know 
if if [sic] Angels were quite 
in a state of security. For 
we know that some of 
them once fell; but per- 
haps they were kept in a 
state of rectitude by hav- 
ing continually before 
them the punishment of 
those which deviated ; 
which was the reason for 
the wicked being eternally 
punished (if it was so). 
As to Mankind. I said 
It was not wrong to hope 
that it might not be so. 
He said It was not. We 
might hope that by some 
other means, a fall from 
rectitude might be pre- 
vented. I said the words 
as to everlasting punish- 
ment were strong. He 
said they were strong. But 



would not literally be ex- 
ecuted. 

Johnson. "Sir, you are 
to consider the intention 
of punishment in a future 
state. We have no reason 
to be sure that we shall 
then be no longer liable to 
offend against God. We 
do not know that even the 
angels are quite in a state 
of security ; nay, we know 
that some of them have 
fallen. It may, therefore, 
perhaps be necessary, in 
order to preserve both 
men and angels in a state 
of rectitude, that they 
should have continually 
before them the punish- 
ment of those who have 
deviated from it; but we 
may hope that by some 
other means a fall from 
rectitude may be pre- 
vented. Some of the texts 
of Scripture upon this sub- 
ject are, as you observe, 
indeed strong; but they 
may admit of a mitigated 
interpretation." 

He talked to me upon 



THE BOSWELL JOURNALS 201 

he seemed inclined to miti- this awful and delicate 

gate their interpretation, question in a gentle tone, 

I was much pleased with and as if afraid to be 

this mildness. decisive. 

Here is ample justification of the general con- 
fidence that has always been felt in Boswell's accu- 
racy. The passage in the right-hand column is, to 
be sure, much longer. Boswell has sketched, from 
memory, the dramatic background, and has put 
the reader in touch with the circumstances of the 
conversation ; but he has added nothing at all ex- 
cept the transition from the ways of Providence to 
the eternal state of the angels. It is possible that 
he made up the sentence, "Sir, you are to consider 
the intention of punishment in a future state"; 
but, in that case, his creative imagination was as- 
sisted by a mind which had become, to use his own 
phrase, "impregnated with the Johnsonian sether," 
and it is not likely that, even in this and the follow- 
ing sentence, he is far from the ipsissima verba of 
Johnson. The passage may confidently be taken 
as typical of Boswell's regular method of dealing 
with his journals. 

But meanwhile we are leaving unanswered the 
question that was originally proposed: How did 
Boswell make his note-books.? In general, he 
wrote up his records in the first convenient interval 
after the conversation had taken place, depending 



202 YOUNG BOSWELL 

on his memory for the general scope and order of 
the remarks. In certain exceptional cases, he 
appears to have jotted down notes on the spot. 
There are two passages in the "Tour to Corsica" 
which probably give us as accurate a notion of his 
general procedure as we are likely ever to get. 

From my first setting out on this tour, I wrote 
down every night what I had observed during the day, 
throwing together a great deal, that I might afterwards 
make a selection at leisure. . . . 

I regret that the fire with which he spoke upon such 
occasions so dazzled me that I could not recollect his 
sayings so as to write them down when I retired from 
his presence. 

To this should be added the amazing evidence 
given in the first volume of the "Life," in reference 
to the spring of 1763, when Boswell was twenty- 
two years old. 

We staid so long at Greenwich, that our sail up the 
river, in our return to London, was by no means so 
pleasant as in the morning; for the night air was so 
cold that it made me shiver. I was the more sensible 
of it from having sat up all the night before, recollecting 
and writing in my journal what I thought worthy of 
preservation ; an exertion, which, during the first part 
of my acquaintance with Johnson, I frequently made. 
I remember having sat up four nights in one week, 
without being much incommoded in the daytime. 



THE BOSWELL JOURNALS 203 

On the other hand, we are to remember that 
PaoH thought at first that Boswell was a spy be- 
cause the young man was *'to the work of writ- 
ing down all that he said." Mrs. Thrale, when 
she wrote her *' Anecdotes of Johnson," sneered at 
Boswell's trick "of sitting steadily down at the 
other end of the room to write at the moment what 
should be said in company." To which he replied 
in the "Life": — 

She has, in flippant terms enough, expressed her dis- 
approbation of that anxious desire of authenticity 
which prompts a person who is to record conversations 
to write them down at the moment. Unquestionably, 
if they are to be recorded at all, the sooner it is done the 
better. 

These two are the chief passages on which a 
comparison of Boswell to a stenographer can be 
based ; and we are to remember that it is a kind 
of evidence which people are likely to exaggerate, 
in their desire to find proof of a notion which has 
already been formed in their mind. It would cer- 
tainly be a most serious error to think of Boswell 
as recording any large amount of his conversa- 
tional material "at the moment." The bulk of it 
unquestionably was written down in private, as he 
himself has told us was his habit. The note-book 
which we have been examining supports this view, 



204 YOUNG BOSWELL 

as I have tried to show; and so does the well- 
known anecdote in the "Life," in which, during a 
particularly brilliant conversation of Johnson's, 
Boswell remarked to Mrs. Thrale, "O for short- 
hand to take this down "and she replied, "You '11 
carry it all in your head. A long head is as good as 
short hand." 

If the fact that he did most of his writing after 
the event tends to make anyone doubt the accuracy 
of his record, it is because he has failed to reckon 
with the fidelity of the man's memory. It is to 
be recalled that Boswell began keeping a journal 
before he was eighteen years old, and, so far as we 
know, never interrupted the practice. He was 
constantly engaged in recording conversations that 
he had heard, and the resultant training of his 
literal memory we are not likely to exaggerate. 
Most of us have no memory of conversation, for 
two very simple reasons. In the first place, we 
have no great desire to preserve it ; and, secondly, 
we have never tried writing it down. It is prob- 
able that a training of two weeks in such a practice 
would enable a man to make a fairly faitliful rec- 
ord of conversation. In Boswell's case that train- 
ing was extended over the whole of his maturity, 
called forth all the power that was in him, and was 
regarded by himself as his most precious faculty. 
He knew his journals as a musician knows his 



THE BOSWELL JOURNALS 205 

score, or a lover his mistress. When he was en- 
gaged in reading the proof-sheets of the "Life," he 
altered a statement that he had set down about 
the conversation of Edmund Burke. In the proofs 
Johnson is quoted as remarking, "His vigour of 
mind is incessant" ; but Boswell has corrected this 
to read," His stream of mind is perpetual " ; and adds 
(as an explanation to the proof-reader) : "I re- 
store. I find the exact words as to Burke." What 
happened is, I think, clear. Boswell had lost the 
original record, and had reconstructed the remark 
about Burke from memory, using such words as he 
imagined Johnson to have employed ; but, in the 
course of his labours on the proofs, he discovered 
the original entry in some one of his numerous 
note-books.^ 

In view of this meticulous carefulness, it is not 
surprising that he boasted of the "scrupulous 
fidelity" of his journal. He knew the value of 
what he was doing. He knew that his journals 
were, even in their undeveloped form, very near 
to the level of literature. In his Commonplace 

1 The two little sentences are worth a moment's study, be- 
cause they show the quahty of Johnson's conversation which 
it was hardest to imitate — his imagery. It is clear that 
Boswell has preserved in memory the significance of what 
Johnson had said about Burke, but the flavour — the "bou- 
quet" of the remark, if I may use the expression — is lost 
with the metaphor. 



^06 YOUNG BOSWELL 

Book he records, a propos of nothing, the following 
sentence : " My journal is ready ; it is in the larder, 
only to be sent to the kitchen, or perhaps trussed 
and larded a little." He had no intention of wast- 
ing the contents of his larder. He had proved the 
value of his wares, while still a young man, with 
his "Account of Corsica." The portion of the 
book which had been praised by everyone was the 
journal of his personal experiences and conversa- 
tions with Paoli, the part which is commonly re- 
ferred to by the separate title of the "Tour to 
Corsica." He had found his vein of genius. It 
ran in the direction of personal reminiscence, not 
in the direction of history. He had kept records 
of all his experiences on the Continent, and had 
planned some time or other to publish them, in- 
cluding the conversations which he had held there 
with the Great. 

This plan was never realised ; but a more re- 
markable experience than any which had befallen 
him upon the Continent awaited him in his own 
country. In August, 1773, his long-cherished plan 
of visiting the Highlands and the Hebrides in 
company with Dr. Johnson was carried out. They 
left Edinburgh on the eighteenth of the month, 
consumed almost two months and a half in travel, 
and arrived at Auchinleck, on their return, on 



THE BOSWELL JOURNALS 207 

the second day of November. Throughout this 
trip Boswell employed all his ingenuity and 
brought into play all the varied influence which the 
son of Lord Auchinleck could exert in Scotland, in 
order to give the Great Lexicographer a good time. 
Their journey was a royal progress, save that they 
were spared that boredom which royalty must 
endure. Their trip was thorough and complete, 
and they returned without any vain regrets. They 
had seen everything worth seeing, and had met 
everybody worth meeting. They had had a great 
deal of pure fun, and acquired a store of informa- 
tion. And Johnson owed all this to Boswell. 
Perhaps no man ever exerted himself more con- 
tinuously or ingeniously to pleasure a friend on 
his travels. Boswell's hope was that Johnson 
would write a book about it. Of course, he him- 
self kept a journal of everything they had seen 
and everything Johnson had said. 

There was one aspect of the journey that had a 
special importance in Boswell's eyes. Johnson 
was, in a sense, in the "enemy's country." As 
has been remarked by critics, with wearisome itera- 
tion, his dislike of Scotland and the Scots was a 
harmless and amusing affectation ; but he had 
played the role so long that the public would not 
let him drop it, even had he been so disposed. 
When it was known that Johnson was to visit 



208 YOUNG BOSWELL 

Scotland, his friends were convulsed with mirth. 
It was as if an anti-Semite were to propose to go 
and disport himself in Jewry. There was no 
doubt that the public would buy and read any book 
on Scotland which he might publish. Boswell 
knew both his country and his friend too well to 
fear that any real injustice would be done to a 
great and good people. His apprehension was of 
a quite different kind. He feared that Johnson 
might never bring himself to write the book. John- 
son was known to be lazy. Something must be 
done about it. 

Johnson left Scotland on the twenty-second of 
November, and Boswell accompanied him as far 
as Blackshields, fourteen miles on the road from 
Edinburgh to London. There they passed the 
night at an inn. The next morning Boswell saw 
his venerable companion safe into the fly for New- 
castle. On the same day he addressed a letter to 
Henry Thrale, which begins as follows : — 

I had the pleasure to receive a few lines from you 
in August when you enclosed a letter to Mr. Johnson 
under cover to me. Since that time our much-respected 
friend and I have had a long and very curious tour, 
of which his letters have, I suppose, given you and 
Mrs. Thrale a pretty full account. The world, how- 
ever, I hope, will have a still fuller account from him. 
I hope you and Mrs. Thrale will not be wanting in 



THE BOSWELL JOURNALS 209 

keeping [him] in mind of the expectations which he has 
raised. ... I flatter myself that he shall have no 
cause to repent of his northern expedition. 

The ostensible reason for writing this letter to 
Thrale was to forward a letter to Miss Anna Wil- 
liams, Johnson's blind housekeeper, which he had 
forgotten to send by Johnson; but the vital pur- 
pose is visible to him who runs. Boswell would 
not lose a day before he began the application of 
that stimulus which was necessary if the world 
was ever to get the story of Johnson's journey to 
the western islands of Scotland. Throughout the 
winter, therefore, he continued to keep Johnson 
mindful of his original plan, for he well knew the 
great man's capacity for forgetting a definite liter- 
ary task. In response to a question which John- 
son asked him about the order of the clans, he 
wrote : "I like your little memorandums ; they are 
symptoms of your being in earnest with your book 
of northern travels." As late as the next April he 
wrote to David Garrick : *'I hope Mr. Johnson has 
given you an entertaining account of his northern 
tour. He is certainly to favour the world with 
some of his remarks. Pray do not fail to quicken 
him by word, as I do by letter." 

All this goading was not administered merely 
for the glory of Samuel Johnson, or the vindication 
of Scotland. There was certainly some thought 



210 YOUNG BOSWELL 

of the reputation which Boswell would acquire as 
the projector of the entire expedition and the 
chosen companion of the author. When the book 
appeared, he found a pleasant reference to himself 
in the first paragraph, as a *' companion whose 
acuteness would help his Inquiry, and whose gaiety 
of conversation and civility of manners are suflS- 
clent to counteract the Inconvenlencles of travel 
in countries less hospitable than we have passed." 
This was gratifying, of course ; but the book as a 
whole failed to satisfy Boswell. He had had the 
highest expectations. "He is certainly to give 
the world some account of his tour to the High- 
lands and Hebrides," he had written to Langton 
before the publication of the book; *'he will not 
only entertain more richly than an ordinary trav- 
eller, but will furnish instruction on a variety of 
subjects." And so Indeed he did, for the "Journey 
to the Western Islands of Scotland" is a fine per- 
formance. But it may be doubted whether a book 
produced at the instigation of another is ever quite 
satisfactory to Its "only begetter." When the 
book appeared, Boswell at once wrote to Johnson 
in Its praise : "The more I read your Journey, the 
more satisfaction I receive. ... I can hardly 
conceive how, in so short a time, you acquired the 
knowledge of so many particulars." And yet that 
knowledge was not perfect. A native Scot, with 



THE BOSWELL JOURNALS 211 

a keen eye and a well-stored journal of his own, 
could detect in the book a multitude of minor 
errors, and, what was more important, a number 
of lost opportunities to entertain the general reader. 
He, therefore, with a naivete characteristic of him, 
as if the mere truth were the only matter to be 
considered, sat down and wrote out a series of 
"Remarks on the Journey to the Western Islands 
of Scotland," in which he not only pointed out 
errors, but made suggestions here and there re- 
specting the improvement of the diction. His 
comments are too extensive to be reprinted entire ; 
the following specimens may serve as typical. 

P. 256, at the bottom. Is it right to change the 
tense .f* "is labouring" . . . '^ arose.'* 

Your reflections on Highland learning, on the Bards, 
and on Ossian amount to Demonstration ; only on page 
274 if any can he found might have been omitted ; for I 
take it to be certain that some wandering Ballads are 
inserted in Fingal. And on page 275, you are mistaken 
in telling "it was never said that any of them could 
recite six lines.'* Some of them do actually recite 
many more. 

P. 277, 1. 13. A triffling inaccuracy. We did not 
leave Sky in a boat that was taking in kelp. It was 
a boat from Hay, in which a Gentleman had come in 
quest of an emigrant who owed him money. But be^ 
fore he came the emigrant was sailed. On the same 
page you treat the storm too lightly. Col and all 
the islanders thought we were really in danger. 



212 YOUNG BOSWELL 

I observe you sometimes write Erse and sometimes 
Earse ; one or other only must be right. 

P. 286, 1. 8, for Brecaeig — Breacachach. 

P. 296 (erroneously printed 9,2Q). This page I be- 
lieve will make me yet go to the popish islands. But 
I must have instructions from you in writing. 

Of the reception of this document by the Sage 
we have no account, but it may safely be left to 
the reader's imagination. Boswell ultimately went 
so far as to propose to publish a sort of supplement 
to the "Journey" ; but, after his trip to London in 
the spring of 1775, this amazing plan was, happily, 
dropped. In May he wrote to Temple : — 

I have not written out another line of my "Remarks 
on the Hebrides." I found it impossible to do it in 
London. Besides, Dr. Johnson does not seem very 
desirous that I should publish any supplement. Be- 
tween ourselves, he is not apt to encourage one to 
share reputation with himself. But don't you think I 
may write out my remarks in Scotland, and send them 
to be revised by you, and then they may be published 
freely ^ 

Such was the origin of the "Journal of a Tour to 
the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.," per- 
haps the sprightliest book of travels in the lan- 
guage. A decade was to elapse, and Johnson to 
pass away, ere the publication of the book; but 
Boswell had his reward for fulfilling the Horatian 



THE BOSWELL JOURNALS 213 

principle of delay. The lapse of time enabled him 
to publish, not a supplement to Johnson's book, 
but an independent volume, in which he was not 
to "share" Johnson's fame as a writer of travels, 
but totally to eclipse it. Moreover, the death of 
his eminent companion enabled him to cast all 




Johnson, the Bear, with Boswell, in Scotland 
From a contemporary caricature 

restraint aside and to print, as literally as he chose 
to do, the diary which he had kept during the tour. 
Of this diary and of the "Tour to the Hebrides" 
he speaks in identical terms. Once only (under 
date of September 4) does he speak of suppressing 
material in the diary. 

This diary had, as it were, the approval — 
though by no means the imprimatur — of Samuel 



214 YOUNG BOSWELL 

Johnson. He was well acquainted with Boswell's 
journal-keeping habits, and had often seen him at 
work upon it. After reading it, he made the re- 
mark that it was a very exact picture of a portion 
of his life. We have Boswell's word for it that 
Johnson was also aware of his intention to produce 
a biography of him. And yet to assert all this is 
not to say that Johnson ever conceived of the 
possibility of Boswell's printing the journal as it 
stood. Print the journal ! He would as soon 
have permitted Reynolds to paint him in a state 
of nature. 

When, in 1785, the "Tour" appeared, Johnson 
had been in his grave nearly a twelvemonth ; but 
though he was not alive, to protest in person, his 
friends protested for him. Nothing like it had 
ever been read. It became at once a standard of 
indiscretion. To compare it with the autobio- 
graphical revelations made, in our own day, by 
the wife of a former Prime Minister of Great Brit- 
ain would be to adduce but a feeble parallel. Bos- 
well calmly recorded Johnson's casual remarks 
about everybody he had met. Lord Errol, for 
example, was told that the pillows on his bed had 
a disagreeable smell. Lord Monboddo was still 
alive, to read Johnson's contemptuous opinion of 
his theory of man's descent from monkeys, and 
was told that he was "as jealous of his tail as a 



THE BOSWELL JOURNALS 215 

squirrel.'' He might also read that Johnson 
disapproved of his round hat, and considered him a 
fool for calling himself "Farmer Burnet." The 
Macaulay family were informed that Johnson 
said he did not believe that the Reverend Kenneth 
Macaulay (or M'Auley) of Calder was capable of 
writing the "History of St. Kilda's" which had 
appeared under his name — a shght which Tre- 
velyan, writing nearly a century later, still found 
it impossible to pardon. The insult to Sir Alex- 
ander McDonald ("I meditated an escape from 
this house the very next day; but Dr. Johnson 
resolved that we should weather it out till Mon- 
day") and that to the famous Duchess of Hamilton 
are too well known to need repetition. When 
Rowlandson and Collings published their popular 
series of caricatures of the "Tour," one plate rep- 
resented Boswell as "revising for a second edition," 
while Sir Alexander, brandishing a stick, stands 
over him as he tears out certain pages of the book. 
In the second edition Boswell did, indeed, make 
certain alterations in the interests of discretion, 
and spoke of a "few observations" which "might 
be considered as passing the bounds of a strict 
decorum"; but enough remained to require the 
revision of every principle of decorum of which 
the eighteenth century had ever conceived. 

In October, a friend of Bishop Percy's wrote to 



* i. 



216 YOUNG BOSWELL 

him about the book, remarking, "I have been 
amused at it, but should be very sorry either to 
have been the author or the hero of it." A pam- 
phlet in the form of a letter to Boswell was written 
by a penny-a-liner calling himself "Verax," in 
which he said : "You have forced upon the Public 
a six-shilling book replete with small talk and ill- 
natured remarks." This wretched hack professed 
to fear that the public would soon "have volume 
upon volume of coffee-house chit-chat or amorous 
tete-d-tetes.'' A satire, entitled "A Poetical Epistle 
from the Ghost of Dr. Johnson to his Friends," 
contains the following lines : — 

O ne'er shall I our curious jaunt forget; 
When, hungry, cold, sleepy, fatigu'd and wet, 
On musty hay we vainly sought repose. . . . 
How oft I mark'd thee, like a watchful cat, 
List'ning to catch up all my silly chat ; 
How oft that chat I still more silly made. 
To see it in thy common-place conveyed ! 

So much for the attack of Boswell's enemies. 
But his friends were scarcely less of a burden to 
him. He was deluged with a Niagara of advice, 
urging him to be more cautious. One page, in 
particular, roused the dismay of everyone who 
had known Johnson. This was the sheet of ad- 
vertisement at the end, in which Boswell an- 
nounced to the public that he was at work upon a 
biography of Johnson, that he had been collecting 




i s 



-- - '/■, 



5 -^ ^ 



THE BOSWELL JOURNALS 217 

materials for twenty years, and that the book 
would include *' several curious particulars," as 
well as "the most au then tick accounts that can 
be obtained from those who knew him best." 

Johnson's acquaintances were seized with alarm. 
What would be their fate in the new book.^^ If 
Boswell had created so great a disturbance in 
Scotland by his account of three months in John- 
son's life, what would be the result in England 
when he published a history of the whole seventy- 
five years of it ? Fanny Burney, as we have seen, 
refused her assistance, and wrote in her "Diary " : 
" I feel sorry to be named or remembered by that 
biographical, anecdotical memorandummer till 
his book of poor Dr. Johnson's life is finished and 
published." One of his best friends. Sir William 
Forbes, who was later to be appointed one of his 
literary executors, took umbrage at the fact that 
Boswell had quoted his approval of the journal, 
before it was in print, and took the liberty of 
"strongly enjoining him" to be more careful about 
personalities in the later work. 

But Boswell was not dismayed. He had the 
solid satisfaction of seeing two large editions of 
the "Tour" devoured by the eager public. He 
might, indeed, have gone too far in certain in- 
stances. He answered his critics, in the second 
edition, by charging them with a failure to under- 



218 YOUNG BOSWELL 

stand the true motive of his recording anecdotes 
which were sometimes to his own disadvantage, 
the objections to which he saw as clearly as did 
they. **But it would be an endless task," he con- 
tinued, "for an authour to point out upon every 
occasion the precise object he has in view. Con- 
tenting himself with the approbation of readers 
of discernment and taste, he ought not to com- 
plain that some are found who cannot or will not 
understand him." 

It may be doubted whether such attacks as Bos- 
well suffered ever really injure a book. The in- 
discretions which shocked the nerves of the eight- 
eenth century have lost something of their tang in 
the passage of the years ; but the naive charm of 
the book remains. More than any work of Bos- 
well's it preserves the freshness and authenticity 
of his journals. If one of the objects of literature 
be to mirror human association and companion- 
ship when at their fullest and most zestful, then 
this book must ever be accorded a very high rank. 
It has a unity and an intimacy denied even to the 
great "Life of Johnson" ; for the geographical iso- 
lation of the Hebrides, and the limitation of the 
account to a single period in the life of the man 
recorded, render it, if possible, a more vivid book 
than the biography, which is, inevitably, more 
diffuse. Moreover, it has the advantage of de- 



THE BOSWELL JOURNALS 219 

picting Johnson in an unusual environment, likely 
to stimulate his powers of observation and lend 
point and colour to his remarks. It tells the story 
of a long holiday ; and it has, therefore, the mirth 
and abandon of spirit characteristic of two friends 
whose chief aim, at the moment, is to have a good 
time. All that is most likable in Boswell appears, 
and all that is depressing — his melancholy, for 
instance — takes flight from its cheerful pages. 
It is the happiest of books, and it has lost none of 
its original power of rendering its readers happy, 
too. 



CHAPTER X 
THE MAGNUM OPUS 

There is a certain kind of reader who vexes 
himself and teases the critic with the question 
whether the author of a great classic really put 
into it all that an enthusiastic reader asserts that 
he finds. Is it a conscious art, or has all the 
greatness, all the subtlety and meaning of it, been 
thrust upon it by the critic ? A suspicious reader 
can usually be set right by passages in which the 
author himself has spoken of his art. A critic is 
as little likely to see more than he was intended to 
see as a stream is likely to rise above its source. 
If anybody doubts whether Boswell meant to pro- 
duce the effects for which he is famous, let him 
gather up everything that the man said about his 
art, about Johnson's theory of biography, and, 
above all, everything that he said about his own 
books, and he will convince himself, that Boswell's 
effects were all calculated. 

I have analysed elsewhere the characteristics 
which, in my opinion, distinguish the "Life of 
Johnson," and account for the supreme position 
to which it has been universally assigned. That 
analysis I do not propose to repeat. It may suf- 



THE MAGNUM OPUS 221 

fice to say that Boswell's general notion was to 
defy the very powers of obHvion and to preserve 
his friend as complete and as vivid as he had been 
in the flesh. With a sufficient amount of assi- 
duity from a sufficient number of people, such a 
result, he thought, might almost have been at- 
tained. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps, on the 
other hand, he failed to reckon with the fact that 
not everyone who might feel inclined to record Dr. 
Johnson had the genius of a Boswell for doing it. 
In all Boswell's complacent references to him- 
self, in the whole range of his pomposity and self- 
conceit, he never once called himself that which in 
fullest truth he was — a genius. I doubt whether 
Boswell ever guessed that he was a genius. His 
fault was vanity — conceit, if you will — rather 
than pride. I mean that he loved to talk about 
himself, loved to dream of becoming a "great 
man," strutted and put on airs, but never, so 
far as I am aware, really overestimated his own 
powers or his own achievement. He was modest 
in his own despite, though having no intention 
whatever of being so. In the group of quotations 
about the "Life of Johnson" that follow, there is 
much vanity, and a great deal more of self-asser- 
tion than there should be ; but there is nothing in 
all his references to himself that can for a moment 
compare with Macaulay's famous summary, to 



222 YOUNG BOSWELL 

which, I fancy, every critic would now assent: 
*' Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic 
poets, Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first 
of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly 
the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biog- 
raphers. He has no second. He has distanced 
all his competitors so decidedly that it is not worth 
while to place them. Eclipse is first, and the rest 
nowhere." And again, "He has, in an important 
department of literature, immeasurably surpassed 
such writers as Tacitus, Clarendon, Alfieri, and his 
own idol Johnson." Had Boswell read such sen- 
tences as these about himself he would have 
swooned with amazement. 

The three passages which I here adduce were all 
written in the early months of the year 1788. The 
first is from a letter to Bishop Percy, thanking him 
for the assistance which he had given. 

Procrastination, we all know, increases in a propor- 
tionate ratio the difliculty of doing that which might 
have once been done very easily. I am really uneasy to 
think how long it is since I was favoured with your- 
Lordship's communications concerning Dr. Johnson, 
which, though few, are valuable, and will contribute 
to increase my store. I am ashamed that I have yet 
seven years to write of his life. I do it chronologically, 
giving year by year his publications, if there were any ; 
his letters, his conversations, and every thing else that 
I can collect. It appears to me that mine is the best 



THE MAGNUM OPUS 223 

plan of biography that can be conceived ; for my readers 
will, as near as may be, accompany Johnson in his 
progress, and, as it were, see each scene as it happened. 
I am of opinion that my delay will be for the advan- 
tage of the work, though perhaps not for the advantage 
of the author, both because his fame may suffer from 
too great expectation, and the sale may be worse from 
the subject being comparatively old. But I mean to do 
my duty as well as I can. 

Some six weeks later he wrote to Temple : — 

Mason's "Life of Gray" is excellent, because it is 
interspersed with letters which show us the Man. His 
"Life of Whitehead" is not a Life at all; for there is 
neither a letter nor a saying from first to last. I am 
absolutely certain that my mode of biography, which 
gives not only a history of Johnson's visible progress 
through the world, and of his publications, but a view 
of his mind, in his letters and conversations, is the most 
perfect that can be conceived, and will be more of a Life 
than any work that has ever yet appeared. 

In April he wrote to Miss Anna Seward (the 
*'Swan of Lichfield"), in reference to the various 
works on Johnson that had appeared : Hawkins's 
"Life," Mrs. Thrale's "Anecdotes," her "Letters 
of Samuel Johnson," Tyers's biographical sketch, 
Towers's essay, "Last Words of Samuel Johnson," 
and "More Last Words" : — 

What a variety of publications have there been con- 
cerning Johnson. Never was there a man whose repu- 



224 YOUNG BOSWELL 

tation remained so long in such luxuriant freshness as 
his does. How very envious of this do the "little 
stars" of literature seem to be, though bright them- 
selves in their due proportion. My Life of that illus- 
trious man has been retarded by several avocations, as 
^ well as by depression of mind. But I hope to have it 
ready for the press next month. I flatter myself it will 
exhibit him more completely than any person, ancient 
or modern, has yet been preserved, and whatever merit 
I may be allowed, the world will at least owe to my 
assiduity the possession of a rich intellectual treasure. 

It will be seen from the last sentence that Bos- 
well made a distinction in his own mind between 
the importance of the principles which he had dis- 
covered and the particular biography which he 
had written; and in drawing this distinction the 
present writer may hope to avoid the charge of 
inconsistency. Boswell had full confidence in the 
method which he had adopted, and counted on it 
to help him write *'more of a Life than any that 
has ever yet appeared" ; but that he had not only 
found the method but also written the classic ex- 
ample of it, — that he was, to speak temperately, 
as illustrious a writer as Johnson, — this, luckily, 
he did not see. Plainly, it is of his "assiduity" 
rather than his genius that he boasts. 

To Boswell, I suppose, the task seemed to make 
a special demand upon one's assiduity. The work 




The Biographers 
( Mrs. Piozzi, John Courtenay, Boswell ) 

Beneath tlie engraving in tlie original, dated "Jan. 1780, J. Cornell, Bruton Street," 
appears the following travesty of Dryden's famous lines under a portrait of JMilton 
Three Authors in three Sister Kingdoms born 
The Shrine of Johnson with their Works adorn. 
The first a female Friend with letter'd Pride 
Bares those Defects which Friendship ought to hide. 

B 11 to Genius gives a Monster's Air 

And shews his Johnson as Men shew a Bear. 

C y to Merit as to Grammar true. 

Blurs with bad Verse the Worth he never knew. 
O could the Sage whose Fame employs their Pen 
Visit his great Biographers again, 

His two good Friends would find him d d uncivil. 

And he would drive the Poet to the Devil. 



THE MAGNUM OPUS 225 

that had required genius (which, let me add, is a 
great deal more than an infinite capacity for 
taking pains) was over and done with. Boswell's 
genius, as distinct from mere industry, had exhib- 
ited itself in originating such a plan and in the 
whole conception of Johnson as the hero of a drama 
of almost national proportions; in his realisation 
of the importance and interest of Johnson's talk, 
and in getting it on paper. He was annoyed, as 
every author is, by the people who were afraid 
of him, afraid that he "might put them in a book." 
People hesitated to meet him after the publication 
of the "Life," and wondered whether their every 
word would be written down by this deputy of the 
Recording Angel. He had something like a quarrel 
with his friend. Sir William Scott, because that 
gentleman, in inviting him to dine, had seen fit to 
caution him not to embarrass the guests by writing 
down their conversation. Boswell thereupon de- 
clined the invitation. Sir William wrote to him, 
explaining the "principle" of his request, and 
apparently pointed out that the persons who 
feared to meet Boswell were thinking of the lot of 
the minor characters in the "Life," who had 
served only as foils to Johnson. Boswell, in ac- 
cepting the apology, made the following declara- 
tion of his own principles, which, it will be seen, 
was intended as a sort of oflScial utterance. 



226 YOUNG BOSWELL 

If others, as well as myself, sometimes appear as 
shades to the Great Intellectual Light, I beg to be 
fairly understood, and that you and my other friends 
will inculcate upon persons of timidity and reserve, that 
my recording the conversation of so extraordinary a 
man as Johnson, with its concomitant circumstances, 
was a peculiar undertaking, attended with much 
anxiety and labour, and that the conversations of people 
in general are by no means of that nature as to bear 
being registered, and that the task of doing it would be 
exceedingly irksome to me. Ask me, then, my dear 
Sir, with none but who are clear of a prejudice which 
you see may easily be cured. I trust there are enough 
who have it not. 

It is clear from this that Boswell deemed himself 
more than a mere realist who was registering life 
just as it is. It was not sufficient to make records. 
It was essential first to find your *' great intellec- 
tual light." That was the work of genius, as it 
was the work of genius to conceive the tremendous 
plan of letting the reader accompany Johnson on 
his *' progress through life.'* 

But the task of taking infinite pains remained. 
Boswell was almost submerged by his own mate- 
rial, not to speak of the material, good and bad, 
that poured in upon him, every scrap of which 
must be tested for its authenticity as well as for its 
inherent interest. The marvel is that he did not 



THE MAGNUM OPUS 227 

give up the task. Indeed, the thought occurred 
to him, for he wrote to Temple : — 

You cannot imagine what labour, what perplexity, 
what vexation, I have endured in arranging a prodi- 
gious multiplicity of materials, in supplying omissions, 
in searching for papers buried in different masses — 
and all this besides the exertion of composing and 
polishing. Many a time have I thought of giving it up. 
However, though I shall be uneasily sensible of its 
many deficiencies, it will certainly be to the world a very 
valuable and peculiar volume of biography, full of lit- 
erary and characteristical anecdotes (which word, by 
the way, Johnson always condemned as used in the 
sense that the French, and we from them, use it, as 
signifying particulars), told with authenticity and in a 
lively manner. Would that it were in the booksellers' 
shops. Methinks, if I had this Magnum Opus 
launched, the publick has no farther claim upon me. 

One of the evidences of the greatness of the book 
is the fact that so little has, in the course of a hun- 
dred and thirty years, been added to our informa- 
tion about Johnson. If we except Miss Burney's 
"Diary,'* which Boswell tried in vain to tap, no 
record of first-rate interest and no really novel view 
of Johnson have been discovered. Dr. Hill pub- 
lished two volumes of "Johnsonian Miscellanies," 
uniform with the "Life," which, if they serve no 
other purpose, cause the work of Boswell to shine 
by contrast. Every scrap about Johnson has been 



228 YOUNG BOSWELL 

gathered up and given to the world, — I have my- 
self taken part in the work, — and the world has 
quite properly neglected it, preferring Boswell. 

Immediately after the appearance of the "Tour" 
Boswell began his preparations for writing the 
"Life." His first task was to collect Johnson's 
letters and such reminiscences of him as seemed 
authentic. He made application by letter to 
Bishop Percy, the Reverend Dr. Adams of Oxford, 
Francis Barber (who had in his possession papers 
of the highest value to a biographer of Johnson), 
Anna Seward, and, no doubt, to a score of others. 
The material which he received from such con- 
tributors he often wrote down in their presence, 
or revised the written record in their presence. It 
is to be regretted that we have no account of any 
of these sessions, for they would have revealed 
the biographer at one of his most characteristic and 
important tasks, which must have exercised all the 
powers of insinuation and tact which he possessed. 

He thought at first that he could finish the book 
by the spring of 1789 ; but the care of Auchinleck, 
the death of Mrs. Boswell in the early summer, 
and his ill-advised candidacy at the General Elec- 
tion for an ad interim membership in Parliament, 
conspired to prevent it. Moreover there was his 
"master," Lord Lonsdale, upon whom it was neces- 



THE MAGNUM OPUS 229 

sary to dance attendance and who frequently sum- 
moned Boswell to his table to provide amusement 
(of no literary kind) for his retainers or "Ninepins." 

Yet, in spite of all interruptions, he had nearly 
completed the first draft before the year was out, 
and by February, 1790, he could say that it was 
fairly in the press. The printers of the eighteenth 
century were a long-suffering generation. They 
actually began the printing of a book before the 
author had completed the manuscript. When 
they had received enough copy to fill up a sheet, 
the type was set, and proofs were pulled and sent 
to the author for correction. When he returned 
them, the sheet was printed and folded, and the 
type in the form distributed. The printer's devil 
hovered between the compositors and the author, 
bearing proofs hot from the press and appeals for 
more copy. It is only by imagining such a state 
of affairs, alien enough from those of our day, that 
we can understand the circumstances of Boswell's 
life in 1790 and 1791, when his "great work" was 
passing through the press before he himself had 
completed the rough draft of it. He gasped some- 
times at its ever-increasing magnitude, and baulked 
at first at the thought of two volumes. 

His chief assistant in the work — a man who has 
never received his due for his generous and friendly 
service — was Edmond Malone, the Shakespearean 



230 YOUNG BOSWELL 

scholar. Malone, as a member of the Literary 
Club, had known Johnson. He respected Bos- 
well's genius. The friendship of the two men is 
said, by a somewhat doubtful anecdote, to have 
been cemented (if not actually formed) in 1785, 
in the printing-house, where Boswell found Malone 
examining with admiration one of the proof-sheets 
of the "Tour to the Hebrides." Malone's labours 
on the "Life" began with the revision of the rough 
draft of the manuscript, which Boswell read aloud 
to him in the quiet of Malone's "elegant study." 
Of the copy that was sent to the printer no sheet 
is known to exist ; but we have two sets of proof- 
sheets, both of which were scanned, in whole or in 
part, by Malone. 

These proof-sheets are a fascinating study. 
Their owner, Mr. R. B. Adam (a Johnsonian 
scholar of no mean standing) has repeatedly pro- 
vided me with opportunities for examining them. 
The first of the two sets covers only 224 pages of 
the first volume,^ of which three signatures (I, K, 
and L) are lacking. The set consists exclusively 
of the sheets for which Boswell had demanded a 
second "revise," or corrected proof; so that the 
lack of the three signatures may merely indicate 
that, in these cases, no revision was asked for — 

^ The references are to the first edition of the Life^ Lon- 
don, 1791. 




Kdmouil Maloue 

Engraving: by J. Soott, from a portrait by Sir Josh\ia llesnolds 

'riiis famous Shakespearean commentator, a member of the Literary Club, rendered 

Boswell invaluable aid in preparing- the manuscript and reading: the proofs of tlie 

Life, of wliich he annotated four later editions 



THE MAGNUM OPUS 231 

that is to say, that Boswell had but one proof of 
those particular sheets. This entire set of proof- 
sheets is quite new to the world of scholars, though 
it may have been known to "collectors" in Eng- 
land. Mr. Adam acquired it in March, 1920. 

The other set of proof-sheets, bought for £127 
by the elder Adam in 1893, is practically complete. 
These proofs were sold when the Auchinleck 
library was, in part, dispersed ; they passed from 
the hands of the salesmen, Messrs. Sotheby, Wil- 
kinson and Hodge, to Mr. Adam, who added them 
to his already famous collection of Johnsoniana 
and Boswelliana in BufiFalo. There they were 
examined by the great editor of the "Life," Dr. 
George Birkbeck Hill, whose study of them may 
be found in the first volume of "Johnson Club 
Papers," published by Mr. Fisher Unwin in 1899. 
This set of proof-sheets also lacks one or two sig- 
natures, — why, I do not know, — the loss of 
which has been made good by the insertion of the 
corresponding pages from the first edition. 

Whether still other proof-sheets may be found, 
it is difficult to say. Certainly there was never 
more than one complete set. One or two more of 
the earlier sets of "revises" will probably turn up; 
but there is, I think, no great doubt that Mr. 
Adam's library now contains most of the proof- 
sheets that ever existed. It is probable that, as 



232 YOUNG BOSWELL 

Boswell progressed in his work, not more than one 
proof was necessary. One sheet in the set, marked 
as approved for the printer, bears the message in 
the compositor's or "corrector's" hand, "More 
copy, please" — a plain indication that only one 
proof was then being shown. 

Apart from merely verbal changes in the in- 
terests of style, the important alterations in these 
proof -sheets are of two kinds : (1) insertion of new 
matter in the text; and (2) excision of "old" 
matter, already set up in type. Of these the 
latter is by far the more important. We are not 
specially interested to know when a given para- 
graph or sentence was introduced into the work; 
whereas a suppressed passage may — nay, prob- 
ably does — contain information more piquant 
than that of the context, and may give us new 
facts. For example, it is not significant to know 
that the paragraph about Johnson's faith in the 
supernatural ^ was an insertion after the printing 
had begun ; but it is interesting to read Boswell's 
opinion of Goldsmith's attire, which was first in- 
serted, and then struck out: "His dress [was] 
unsuitably gawdy and without taste." In writ- 
ing of Mr. Wedderburn's Scotch dialect, it is first 
said, "Though his voice produce not a silver tone, 
but rather a hard iron sound, if that expression 
^Life, first edition, vol. 1, p. 219. 



THE MAGNUM OPUS 233 

may be used." This remark Boswell struck out of 
the proof as, presumably, too personal. 

But, in general, the excisions are remarkably 
few. The additions are much more numerous, 
and are usually put in to lend colour and variety. 
For example, when Dr. Adams suggested to John- 
son that he engage, as assistant in a projected task, 
the French Dr. Maty, Boswell wrote, at first: 

>F DR. JOtfNSONi 

4iT€veii vaihouf thought. His perftitf Was 
J^y his deportniicnt that of aftio ' 
ir ^Vjr h iii l i t ii w m) ii r i T i fe iili 
ftances of it are hardly credible. When 
ng lidies with their mother 'on a tour in 
t Ebore attention wa$-j)aid 'to tiernthan to 
;..r.i.-.T,- Ur,i.l cue..-..-, - t^'gjjg^ ^;^^^(^ 

»at dcxteritjr •a' pippct was'^de to tofs a /^ 

lOuH have fuch^praifc, fat'exdalmed widi ^^ 

•better myfelf." 

ed fyftcm of any fort, lb that- hi? conduft 
out his aftAions were focial and geneidm 
Kepredoininated over his.attention to.tniffi 

"Johnson declared his disapprobation of this in 
contemptuous tones"; but altered it to read: 
"*He' (said Johnson), *the little black dog! I'd 
throw him into the Thames.'" Here evidently 
was a remark which Boswell decided, on second 
thoughts, it was safe to risk. So, again, the illus- 
trations of odd definitions in Johnson's Dictionary 
were added in the first proof. 

The writing on the proof-sheets is in at least four 
different hands. Boswell's own comments are 







T H£ 

LIFE 

D F 

SAMUEL JOHN SO TC, LL.D. 



To write the life of him who excelled aD mankind in writing Ae 
Svcs of o[hen, and who) whctlier we confider his extraordinary endow* 
encnts, or his various works, has been equalled by few in any agi^ 
is an-aphous, and may be reckonca in me a prefumptuous u-Di. 

Mad Dr. Johnlbo written his own life, in oonfonGitywich the opinioo whicli 
Ittlou given*, that every man's life may be brft written by himfclf i had he 
co^iloyed in the prefcrVation of hu.<)wn hifiory, jbst dearaels of oarratiob 
■aod deganoe of laii^oilge in which he has embalmed lb many eminent per- 
Ibhs, the worid would probably. have Jiad the moft perfeS eiiample of 
biography that was ever exhibited. ]But although he at diflerent times, in a 
defulipry mannfr'. Committed to '.writing many particulars of the progrefs of 
ttif mind and fortunes, |ie never had perfevering diligence enough to fonn 
than ^nto a .regular compofition. D(| thefe men;orials a few have been 
pre&rved i hot the greater pan' was confi^ned by him \<t the flames, a few 
days before his'd^ch. ' . . - , . ' ' ' 

A^ I Vd the. honpvr ^pd .b^plneis ofeojoyiug his IHendlhJp for upwatxla 
■oflo»enty years i. as 1 had the fcheme of writing his life conltantly In viewi 
.^Wwwas well i^ptiki of this circtimflattce, and froio tiffie to time obligingly 
•^tisfirf Jrpy iajujriirsj by conamunicating'to nie the incidents of his early 
gren t u J «a]uii«d » facility in xccoUc^ng, aod was very aHid'ious ^ 

•Ula..}h.*i, 

B tccording 



Proqf-sheet qfthe " Life,^^ Jirst revise 




^^4<fNZ. 







ATiyERrTSEMENr. 
paflage here and there, have agreed that they could not help going 
through, and-bcing entertained through the whole. I wifli, indeed, 
fomc ftw grofl-expreffions had been foftmed, and a few of our hero's 
foibles had been a little more fliaded; but irwufeful to fee the weak- 
nefTes incident to great minds; and you have given US Dr. Johnfon's 
authority tint in hiftory all ought to be told." 

Such a fanSion to my faculty of gtving a juji rtfrtfinietion if Dr. 
'chnjin I could mt conceal^ 









VV*.^^ (^/UfT^L^ 



/ 







LPIIAEETJ(CAL 






'<Sc^' 



Proqf-sheet qfthe ''Life " ; last page of the '' Advertisement,'' 
or Vref ace , first revise 



236 YOUNG BOSWELL 

not infrequently of that highly personal character 
which distinguishes whatever he did — " Let me 
have another Revise sent to Sir Joshua Reynolds's 
in Liecester [sic] Square, where I dine, and it shall 
be returned instantly.^' "I am sorry the com- 
positor has so much trouble." "I shall see this 
at the Printing house to-morrow morning before it is 
thrown off. Tuesday." "This Remains till an an- 
swer comes from Dr. Warton." Few books have been 
read for the printer with more scrupulous care. 

Malone saw the proof-sheets of three quarters of 
the book. His advice was generally intended to 
make the style smoother. For example, on page 
84, he writes of Johnson's poem, "Friendship," 
which Boswell had introduced without suflScient 
explanation, "Something sh- be s- about its ap- 
pearing in this year & having been given by Mr. 
Hector." On page 124, he comments, "Too 
abrupt" ; and adds a sentence of his own, to serve 
as introduction to Dr. Johnson's letter to Birch. 
By an odd error Dr. Birkbeck Hill assumed that 
Malone's handwriting was that of the "corrector" 
at the printing-house, and thus he missed the sig- 
nificance of some of the corrections. It was 
Malone, for example, who suggested to Boswell 
that he should suppress the mention of Johnson's 
hands as "not over-clean," in the famous scene 
which depicts Johnson as squeezing lemons into a 



THE MAGNUM OPUS 237 

punch-bowl, and calling out, "Who 's for poonsh ? " 
"'He must have been a stout man,' said Garrick, 
'who would have been for it."* This remark, too, 
was cancelled at the same time. 

Five of the signatures (or folded sheets of eight 
pages) are marked by Malone as approved for the 
press. These are Rr - Xx, and they contain no 
corrections in Boswell's hand. I judge that they 
were corrected by Malone during some illness or 
indisposition of Boswell's. It is to be feared that 
the joy of seeing his book in proof sometimes led 
our Boswell to convivial indulgence in port, which 
made the correction of his pages well-nigh im- 
possible. At any rate, signature H (pages 49-56) 
shows plain evidence of such incapacity: for he 
has made four attempts to alter "the scantiness 
of his circumstances" to "Johnson's narrow cir- 
cumstances," and has barely succeeded on the 
fourth attempt. 

After November, 1790, Boswell had no further 
help from Malone, who was obliged to go to Ire- 
land. A third hand appears in the proof-sheets 
when Malone's is no longer found. It may be that 
of Mr. Selfe, the "corrector" at the printing-office, 
but I do not think so; for Selfe read the proof- 
sheets after they were returned by the author. 
The hand I cannot identify, but it is that of a 
learned man. 



238 YOUNG BOSWELL 

Some day there will probably be found a copy 
of the "Life" more interesting than any which is 
at present known to exist. I refer, of course, to 
Boswell's own copy. It may perhaps still be in 
the possession of the representatives of the Bos- 
well family. I do not know. The Boswell family 
have persistently repulsed all scholars who have 
had the temerity to apply to them for assistance. 
But they have already sold Boswell's own copy of 
the "Tour," which is said to contain annotations 
by the author on nearly every page. When the 
author's copy of the "Life," is found, his annota- 
tions will enable some future critic of Boswell to 
complete this history of the composition of that 
work. Meanwhile, the reader no doubt feels that 
he has already had enough. 



:e 



BOSWELL 

^/> OF M 

BosrweU^s Seal or Hookplate 



CHAPTER XI 
THE MASTER OF AUCHINLECK 

I HAVE called this book "Young Boswell" be- 
cause it seemed to me that the spirit which imbued 
his entire literary work was essentially youthful. 
Even in the role of hero-worshipper, — a simple 
conception of him which has satisfied many critics, 

— there is something of youth and its illusions. 
When Boswell was at his best, there were present 
in him the qualities associated with youth, — con- 
fidence, buoyancy, hope, and an appetite for ex- 
perience, — as well as the common faults of youth 

— self-indulgence and self-esteem. It may seem 
presumptuous to add, at the end of a book devoted 
to a study of this youthful spirit, a final chapter 
on the latter years. They are not a pleasant study. 
In them Boswell felt the swift retributions of 
middle age ; but he kept until the very end, much 
of the boy about him. He was always expecting 
some happy turn of fortune or some revocation 
of the edict of destiny. As the misfortunes of 
his middle age crowded upon him, he murmured 
at his lot ; yet there was, had he been able to real- 
ise it, a relentless consistency in his sufferings, for 



240 YOUNG BOSWELL 

they all sprang from an over-indulgence in his 
peculiar pleasures. 

One of these was a passion for London, the like 
of which Johnson himself averred that he had 
never seen. Had Boswell been willing to live 
quietly at Auchinleck during nine months of the 
year, visiting the metropolis only during "the 
season," except when he was engaged in putting 
some literary work through the press, a very dif- 
ferent end might have been his. But the old fire 
raged in his veins. He felt it necessary to transfer 
his residence to England, to send his sons to Eton 
and Westminster, respectively, and to educate 
his daughters in the ways of London society, erad- 
icating every trace of the Edinburgh manner. 

The first steps towards this were made possible 
by the death, in August, 1782, of Lord Auchinleck. 
Boswell was thereafter free from the restraints 
imposed upon him by a querulous and dissatisfied 
father. But he was not happy in his inheritance 
of the great estates at Auchinleck. He had em- 
barrassed himself by debts, contracted in his 
father's lifetime, which were now a burden upon 
the estate and a serious reduction of the income 
from it. He might perhaps have relieved himself 
by alienating some of the recently acquired prop- 
erty, had he not taken as much pride as ever in 
being a member of the landed gentry and in 




The Masler of Auchhdeck 
EngrraviiiK by E. Kiiulen, from a portrait by Sir Josliua Reynolils 



THE MASTER OF AUCHINLECK 241 

having "a hundred men at his back." It might 
be desirable to go and live in London with men of 
genius, but it was imperative, also, to preserve all 
the lustre of the Master of Auchinleck. Unhap- 
pily, the income from the place was not adequate 
to all the demands upon it. In 1789, Boswell con- 
fessed to Temple that, though the rent-roll was 
above £1,600, the payment of annuities and inter- 
est on debts, together with necessary expenses on 
the estate itself, reduced his income to about £850, 
and of this, in turn, he had to spend £500 on his 
five children. 

To live in London, moreover, had necessitated 
something very like a change of profession. When 
he was well over forty years of age, the fulfilment 
of his ambition to be an English barrister com- 
pelled him to qualify for admission to the English 
bar, like a youngster in his twenties, by residing a 
certain number of terms in the Temple and study- 
ing the manifold differences between English and 
Scottish law. These differences are, of course, ap- 
palling ; and Boswell, at any rate, never mastered 
them. Although he was called to the English 
bar in the Hilary term of 1786, and for a time cher- 
ished the hope of getting some briefs, — if not in 
London, on the York circuit, — it took but three 
years to dispel all his illusions. In 1789, he wrote 
to Temple : — 



242 YOUNG BOSWELL 

I am in a most illegal situation ; and for appearance 
should have cheap chambers in the Temple, as to 
which I am still inquiring; but in truth I am sadly dis- 
couraged by having no practice, nor probable prospect 
of it. And to confess fairly to you, my friend, I am 
afifraid that were I to be tried, I should be found so 
deficient in the forms, the quirks and the quiddities which 
early habit acquires, that I should expose myself. Yet 
the delusion of Westminster Hall, of brilliant reputation 
and splendid fortune as a barrister, still weighs upon 
my imagination. I must be seen in the courts, and 
must hope for some happy openings in the causes of 
importance. 

All this was most deplorable, because it meant 
not only a failure to acquire a new profession, but 
the complete disuse of the old one. When Bos- 
well's father died, the younger man had still a 
respectable practice, and one which was suscep- 
tible of considerable development. But it was all 
sacrificed to the charms of London. 

One of the distressing evidences of human blind- 
ness is our inability, not only to appreciate our 
blessings, but even to know that we have them. 
Boswell longed all his days for fame, and fame was 
given to him, in rich measure, and of a kind des- 
tined to grow rather than decline with the years. 
Yet at the very moment that he was known to 
every reader in England as the author of the " Tour 
to the Hebrides,*' he was babbling to Temple about 



THE MASTER OF AUCHINLECK 243 

the joys of Westminster. The greatest biographer 
who ever hved longed, with a juvenile longing, to 
be James Boswell, M.P. 

Of Boswell's unsuccessful attempts to get into 
Parliament — that is, of his relations with that 
hateful and unscrupulous politician. Lord Lons- 
dale — I propose to say nothing. It is a record of 
boot-licking by Boswell, on which I do not care 
to dwell. As I make no pretension to writing his 
biography, I am happily released from the neces- 
sity of following him into passages of his life which 
are neither amusing nor profitable, and which 
are of no value in revealing the origin or quality 
of his genius. 

But there was one activity of his closing years 
which has only recently been revealed, and which 
displays Boswell in a new capacity, with duties 
which he discharged, so far as one can judge, skil- 
fully and kindly. A number of letters have 
recently come to light which show us that the 
Master of Auchinleck was a just and generous 
landlord. Most of them were addressed to An- 
drew Gibb, the young factor on the Auchinleck 
estate, and they were placed in my hands by Mr. 
James Gibb of Wembley, his great-grandson and 
last direct descendant. In a letter in which he 
courteously gave me permission to copy these docu- 
ments, Mr. James Gibb told me that he had the 



244 YOUNG BOSWELL 

papers from his aunt, herself a granddaughter of 
the factor, who, however, desired "to remain 
anonymous." '*She is old-fashioned enough," 
adds Mr. Gibb, "to be rather jealous of the repu- 
tation of the biographer, and I think her intention 
in voluntarily placing these letters at your disposal 
is to show him in the role of a landed proprietor 
who, by endeavouring to be strict as well as just, 
realised his responsibilities to his family and his 
tenants." 

As the last of Andrew Gibb's daughters lived 
until about 1890, it is clear that we have, in this 
opinion, a reliable family tradition regarding Bos- 
well during the thirteen years in which he directed 
the affairs of Auchinleck. 

This tradition is borne out by the evidence in 
the letters. Considered merely as letters, they are, 
of course, devoid of interest, but they do show 
us a man dealing with a work to which he is com- 
petent, and, though financially embarrassed, yet 
in general just, compassionate, and attentive to 
detail. 

The following may serve as a specimen : — 

London, 4 June, 1791. 
Andrew, — 

You have done very well as to the cattle and sheep ; 
and you will remit the proceeds by a bill, that I may dis- 
tribute the cash. 




^ 



= 3. 



THE MASTER OF AUCHINLECK 245 

As to Andrew Arnot, he seems to be in woeful cir- 
cumstances. But I incline to indulge him so far as 
not to sell his cattel, and in short to try if he can 
recover. 

As to George Paton, I am sorry to see him falling 
back so. He has a cautioner for five years' rents, and 
if he does not pay up equally with the rest, I mean his 
Whitsunday money rent and Candlemas meal, let him 
be proceeded against; and if he fails to pay, proceed 
against his cautioner. But do not deal harder with 
him than with others ; I mean, let his Martinmas rent 
remain unpaid till I come home in August. 

Let me add as to Andrew Arnot, that if he suffers his 
cattle to trespass, and if there be an appearance of much 
debt to others besides me, his stock and crop should be 
secured for my behoof, 

I think John Lindsay in Skilburn a good man, and 
therefore accept of his proposal of six pounds for the 
grass crop, with liberty to dig the yards so far as not in 
grass. That is, I believe, about his old rent; for he 
paid one rent to me and the other to the original ten- 
ant's widow. 

However ill Andrew Dalrymple has behaved, I re- 
lent, and you will act in terms of my note at the foot 
of his letter, which I enclose. 

Let Archibald Steel know that I cannot judge of his 
case till I see his farm. But neither he nor any one 
else upon my estate has reason to fear that I will be a 
hard master. 

I recollect no more at present, but remain 

Your wellwisher, 

James Boswell. 



246 YOUNG BOSWELL 

It is clear that Andrew Gibb was not obliged to 
be the kind of factor that was known to Robert 
Burns in the same county a very few years before, 
and that James Boswell was not the kind of ab- 
sentee landlord who disgraces the pages of British 
history. The letters to Andrew are full of human 
touches and of vivid glimpses of Auchinleck — a 
fallen tree, the encroachments of the river Lugar, 
the collapse of "a large part of the old house," 
dear to Boswell as "an old acquaintance." "I am 
sorry for David Murdock's heavy losses. Be easy 
with him. How is my young Muirland pony 
thriving.'^" 

There is a far-away echo of the French Revolu- 
tion, which Boswell deems it necessary to put 
down by any means ready to his hand : — 

What does John Stirling mean by apprehending 
commotions? Bad people attempted to raise them 
here. But the wise and worthy majority have united 
so firmly that all fear is over. In ease any seditious 
deceitful writings have been dispersed in our neigh- 
bourhood, I send you two copies of Judge Ashurst's 
"Charge" and "One Pennyworth of Truth," which 
may be posted up in smithy's and lent about. Paste 
one of Judge Ashurst's "Charges" in the oflSce, that all 
the tenants may see it. 

On May 31, 1793, he writes the following inter- 
esting sentence which, if the purpose expressed in 



THE MASTER OF AUCHINLECK 247 

it had been carried out, would have filled his life 
with new interests and saved him, perhaps, from 
the dissipation into which he was sinking. " Next 
month I am going abroad on a tour of Holland and 
Flanders and to pass some time with the com- 
bined armies." His intention, in other words, 
was to go and visit the Austrian and British allies 
in their attack upon the towns of Northern France, 
and to be present at the siege of Valenciennes. If 
he could have gone, what a volume of reminis- 
cences he would have written ! He would have 
met everybody in the allied camp, and we should 
have had the pleasure, not only of listening to 
their conversation, but of reading of all Boswell's 
emotions in tempore belli, while he surveyed the 
battle from afar. 

But in June he was attacked and robbed while 
he was drunk, his head was cut, and he was knocked 
about in a very sad fashion, so that he was confined 
to his bed with pain and fever for many days. He 
was still determined to go, however, when he wrote 
to Andrew Gibb on the third of July. Towards 
the end of that month he paid a visit to his 
friend Bennet Langton, at Warley, where Lang- 
ton was a major in the Royal North Lincolnshire 
militia. But the old enthusiasm was gone ; he did 
not stay out his visit, and candidly owned to his 
old friend that he had had enough of a camp. 



I r 



248 YOUNG BOSWELL 

On his return to London he wrote : — 

In my convalescent state, another disturbed n?ght 
would have hurt me much. 

London ! London ! there let me be ; there let me 
see my friends ; there a fair chance is given for pleasing 
and being pleased. . . . 

1 hesitate as to Valenciennes, though I should only 
survey a camp there. Yet my curiosity is ardent. 

But his recovery was slow, as may be seen from 
the following letter to Sir Michael le Fleming, 
Baronet. 

London, 81 July 1793. 
My dear Sir, — 

Your kind desire to hear from me flattered me much, 
and I should sooner have written to you, but could not 
communicate what I know you would wish to know, 
my perfect convalescence. I am not yet free from the 
consequences of the villainous accident which befell me, 
being feeble, and not in my right spirits. Pourtant il 
va bien. I met at the Circuit at Chelmsford our friend 
Bailey Heath, who desired I would present his compli- 
ments to you. Indeed, as you love your friends, your 
friends love you. 

London is, I think, emptier at present than I ever 
saw it. This moment I have had the agreable news 
that Valenciennes has surrendered. I shall celebrate it 
today at the Mess of the Life Guards, where I dine 
soberly, as I must do at present. Were you in London, 
your superexcellent Claret should flow. 

The second edition of my "Life of Dr. Johnson" (in 
which I have paid a just compliment by name to your 



THE MASTER OF AUCHINLECK 249 

honour) is come out, and goes off wonderfully. I ever 

am, with most sincere regard for my dear Sir Michael, 

Your attached friend and faithful humble servant, 

James Boswell. 

The reader may think what he likes of Boswell's 
associations with Sir Michael, for nothing is known 
of them ; but it is to be feared that they were not 
altogether admirable. The superexcellent claret 
and, no doubt, the superexcellent port that flowed 



^ J^t^P^'i-^^-^ ,./0i^-^Cy?^^i^rPn-^i!^^ ^y^i 





Inscription in a Presentation Copy of the second edition 
qfthe "'Life'' 

SO freely in his house were not calculated to develop 
the genius of James Boswell. He was courting ill- 
ness and disaster, for, as he approached the end, 
he was drunk very often. He was the victim of 
sorry jests, with which readers of the later and sad- 
der years of his biography are sufficiently familiar. 
In February, 1795, he tells Andrew Gibb how he 
had had his pocket picked of a letter and a handker- 



250 YOUNG BOSWELL 

chief — doubtless when he was in such a condition 
as to be ignorant of what was going on about him. 
But the end was now not far distant. 

His essential gaiety of disposition never de- 
serted him. About a fortnight before his last ill- 
ness seized him, he wrote in his usual buoyant way 
to a new flame, Lady Orkney, a countess in her 
own right, and nearly two years a widow. She had 
met him at the estates of her late husband at 
Taplow, and had, apparently, told him that he was 
"gallant and gay." He Is now desirous of "waiting 
upon her," for she had promised him mutton at 
Clifden. "I only say, do not hastily engage your- 
self. I am your Ladyship's warm admirer." 

From his sick bed he dictated a letter to Warren 
Hastings, congratulating him on his "honourable 
acquittal," and assuring him that, as soon as he 
might be able to "go abroad," he would fly to him, 
"and expand his soul in the purest satisfaction." 
Of Hastings he had seen something since the be- 
ginning of "the magnificent farce," and he was, of 
course, an ardent sympathiser. In the letter to 
Hastings Boswell told how his physician, Dr. 
Warren, gave him the pleasing assurance that his 
sufferings were nearly at an end. On the "assur- 
ances" given to the sick, who shall rely.? Our 
Boswell was indeed nearing the end. He wrote no 
more letters. He died on the nineteenth of May, 



THE MASTER OF AUCHINLECK 251 

three days after the anniversary of his first meeting 
with Johnson. 

During these latter years, his chief literary occu- 
pation was the revision of the "Life of Johnson,'* 
and the third edition was far advanced towards 
publication when the author's death occurred. To 
the reader who knows the many excesses into which 
he fell, the wonder is that he lived to complete and 
publish a work of such epic proportions as the 
"Life." After it was safely "out," he not un- 
naturally relaxed his ambitions, and was content 
to bask in the reputation which it made for him. 
The desire of completing it had pulled him through 
many fits of hypochondria ; but when the task was 
once done, he had no ambition left for the other 
books which it had once been his hope to write. 
That he could not bring himself to undertake them 
has cost him dear, for it has meant that his repu- 
tation has been well-nigh submerged by that of the 
man whose life he wrote. In various odd ways 
critics have tried to deprive him of all right to his 
reputation. I have a friend who once told me that 
he was engaged in reading the "Life of Johnson," 
but skipping every reference to Boswell himself — 
"Boswell without Boswell," as he put it. This, 
I should suppose, must have been a more dismal 
experience than reading "Hamlet" without the 
Prince. 



252 YOUNG BOSWELL 

And then there have been *' selections" from the 
great book, — as if part of its greatness did not 
reside in its very magnitude, — and countless other 
attempts to conceal the artist who wrought the 
work and who, with all his merits, certainly never 
aspired to that of self-obliteration. But at last 
the tide has turned. The world has wearied of 
preaching at Boswell, and has consented to enjoy 
him. But the supremacy of his position would 
have been clearer, though it could hardly have 
been surer, if he had completed some of the other 
works which he had in mind. 

The literary projects which he formed from time 
to time were numerous. He planned an essay in 
appreciation of Addison's poetry, and a history of 
King James IV, of Scotland, whom he styles *'the 
patron of my family." He planned a life of Thomas 
Ruddiman, the classical scholar. We have seen 
that he intended to publish his reminiscences of 
Hume, and to do a biography of Sir Alexander 
Dick. One of his less-known plans was to write a 
series of stories for children. When he was 
twenty-three years old, he bought a volume of 
chap-books, containing the stories of Jack and the 
Giants, Doctor Faustus, Guy of Warwick, Johnny 
Armstrong, and others, and wrote the following in- 
scription in it ; — 



THE MASTER OF AUCHINLECK 253 

Having, when a boy, been much entertained with 
Jack the Giant-Killer, I went to the Printing Office in 
Bow Churchyard and bought this collection. I shall 
certainly some time or other, write a little Story Book 
in the style of these. I shall be happy to succeed, for 
he who pleases children will be remembered by men.^ 

Reference has already been made to his wish, 
expressed as late as 1791, to recount his travels on 
the Continent and his conversations with the 
Great. "I can give an entertaining narrative," 
he said to Johnson regarding this project, "with 
many incidents, anecdotes, jeux d'esprit, and re- 
marks, so as to make very pleasant reading." 

No less interesting was his plan for writing the 
history of the invasion of Bonny Prince Charlie 
in '45, which he wished, magniloquently, to call the 
"History of the Civil War in Great Britain in 1745 
and 1746." Once, when he and Johnson were 
nearing the town of Derby, he observed that they 
were that day to stop just where the Highland 
army did in 1745. "It was a noble attempt," 
said Johnson, who was, sentimentally, as much of 
a Jacobite as was Boswell himself. "I wish we 
could have an authentick history of it," said Bos- 
well; to which Johnson replied, "If you were not 

1 Catalogue of Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge 
(Sale of the Auchinleck Collection, 1893), p. 7. 



254 YOUNG BOSWELL 

an idle dog, you might write it, by collecting from 
everybody what they can tell, and putting down 
your authorities." At that time (1777) Boswell 
resolved to carry out the suggestion. Four years 
before, he and Johnson had met Flora Macdonald 
in the Hebrides, and had heard from her own lips 
the story of Prince Charles's escape from Scotland, 
after the disasters in the south. If the account 
which Boswell records in the "Tour to the Heb- 
rides" is a specimen of the kind of information he 
could still pick up, it is to be regretted that he did 
not pursue his original intention ; for he would not 
only have preserved facts which would have been 
of value to historians, but would have written a 
book as interesting as a novel of Walter Scott's. 

But when all such regrets are recorded, it must 
be admitted that there is, perhaps, no permanent 
loss ; for such works, had they been written, would 
but have served to set off the other. They would 
have been the foil to the "Life." The splendour 
of that book is in no danger of being forgotten. 
Perhaps, as the years pass, the chief danger to which 
it is exposed is that of being talked about rather 
than read. But it has seemed to me that some- 
thing might be said in proof of the essential amia- 
bility of the man who had the genius to write it — 
a man, who with all his weaknesses was cheerful 
and gay, always eager for the punch-bowl to be 



THE MASTER OF AUCHINLECK ^5 

brought out and the talk to begin; a man who 
loved drollery more than most, and knew that the 
sublimest moments in life took on point and lustre 
by being set over against the actualities of daily 
existence ; a man, too, who, even in his folly, was 
more natural than most human beings will care to 
admit. 




INDEX 



Adam brothers (Jameb, John, 
Robert, William), 8. 

Adam, Robert B., 231. 

Adam, Robert B., Jr., owner of the 
only known proof-sheets of the 
Life, 230/. 

Adams, Rev. William, 194, 228, 233. 

Addison, Joseph, 252. 

"Amete, Mile., the Turk." See 
Emetnlla. 

Appian Way, the, 78, 79. 

Arblay, Madame d' (Fanny Bnrney), 
her Diary quoted, 34, 111, 187, 
188, 217; her feeling about the 
Life, 188, 189; mentioned, 149, 
227. 

Armstrong, Daniel, 80, 81. 

Asquith, Herbert H., 214. 

Asquith, Margot, 214. 

Auchinleck, Lord, B.'s father, advo- 
cate and judge, extent of his 
estates, 7, 8 ; the Boswellian crest, 
8 ; his relations with B., 20, 21, 96, 
97, 98 ; his views of the purpose of 
B's visit to Holland, 22, 23 ; B.'s 
"management" of, 23/.; decides 
to send B. to Utrecht, 30; and 
Lord Keith, 42, 43; consents to 
B.'s visit to Germany, 43, and 
to the Italian tour, 46-48; was 
good material for B.'s literary 
purpose, 97, 98; his opinion of 
B.'s associates, 98; refuses to 
sanction B.'s addresses to Zelide, 
155, 156; effect of his death on 
B.'s position, 240; mentioned, 29, 
30, 37. 127, 138, 139, 141, 150, 154. 

Auchinleck estate. If. ; the cabinet, 
and its contents, 89, 90, 192; B.'s 
debts a burden on, 240, 241 ; his 
creditable record as Master of, 
243/. 



Barber, Francis, 228. 

Barnard, Rev. Thomas, 194. 

Beauclerk, Topham, 171, 194. 

Belle Irlandaise, La. See Mary 
Anne. 

Benoit, M., L' Atlantide, 61, 62. 

Berlin, 39, 44, 45. 

Berlioz, Hector, 180. 

Blair, Kate, "the Princess," B.'s 
wooing of, 138/.; hears of B.'s 
rash talk about her, 145; B.'s 
rivals for her favour, 146, 150/.; 
in Edinburgh, 146, 147; B.'s in- 
terview with, detailed by B. in 
letter to Temple, 147-149 ; rejects 
B.'s suit, 152 ; B. again a suitor to, 
159. 

Blair, Mrs., 138, 139, 140, 145, 159. 

Boswell, Alexander, of Auchinleck. 
See Auchinleck, Lord. 

Boswell, David, B.'s brother, letter 
to, 10. 

Boswell, Mrs. Euphemia, B.'s 
mother, 7 and n., 82, 83. 

Boswell, James, his Ode to Tragedy, 
and its dedication, 1, 3 ; his ambi- 
tion to associate with the Great, 
3-5, 6, 10, 11, 62, 119; his curious 
sense of humoiir, 5 ; dedication of 
his Cub at Neimnarket, 5 ; his social 
status, compared with Johnson's, 
6; his origins, 7; though heir-ap- 
parent to Auchinleck, longs for 
London, 9; Auchinleck and Ulu- 
brae, 9, 10; first impressions of 
London, 10 ; seeks association with 
literary genius rather than rank 
and riches, 11, 12; his early life, 
11; first meeting with Hume, 11, 
12 ; his judgment of Hume, 12, 13 
and n. ; escapes being a prig, 13 ; 
his disorderly education, 13, 14; 



X 



258 



INDEX 



always "on the rove," 14 ; his re- 
lations with Johnson a vindica- 
tion of his ambition, 14, 15 ; the 
distinctive feature in his character, 
15 ; his unequalled naivete, 15, 17 ; 
inscription in his copy of The Gov- 
ernment of the Tongue, 15 ; Mme. 
du Deffand on, 17; his melan- 
choly, 18, 19, 20, 25 ; his plans and 
prospects described in letter to 
Johnston, 20-22; relations with 
his father, 20, 21, 96, 97; his "af- 
fairs," 22, 24; his "boy," 22, 24, 
25 ; his views for his foreign tour, 
and his father's, 22, 23; how his 
father is to be " managed," 23, 24 ; 
his attainments in the law not 
negligible, 27/.; Dr. J. T. T. 
Brown quoted on, 29. 

Reasons for choice of Utrecht 
for pursuing his studies, 29, 30; 
familyconnections in Holland, 30, 
37 ; his plans for study at Utrecht, 
31; starts for Holland, 31, 32; 
early days in Utrecht, 32; his 
social activities there, 32 Jf. ; his 
friends, 32-36 ; at The Hague, 37, 
38 ; at Leyden, 38, 39 ; significance 
of the character of the entries in 
his Commonplace Book, 39, 40; 
41 ; his indifference to architecture , 
art, and scenery, 39, 40 ; Johnson's 
influence, how far responsible, 39, 
40 ; his pride in his record of anec- 
dotes and bons mots, 41 ; his esti- 
mate of conversation, 41, 42 ; de- 
cides to leave Holland, 42; 
through Lord Keith's influence, 
his father consents to his visiting 
Germany, 43 ; travels with Lord 
Keith and "the Turkish lady," 

43, 44; contemplates making a 
character sketch of Lord Keith, 

44, 53 ; Lord Keith quoted on, 44 ; 
in Berlin, 44-46; wearies of Ger- 
man etiquette, 45; tries to "use" 
A. Mitchell, to manage his father 



with regard to the Italian tour, 
46, 47; obtains his father's coU'- 
sent, 47. 

Discovery of his letters to Rous- 
seau fills a gap in his biography, 
48; at Val de Travers, 49; ap- 
proaches Rousseau without other 
reconmiendation than his own 
social genius, 49, 50; his artful 
letter, 50-52, and its success, 53; 
his association with Rousseau de- 
scribed, 53; his confidences, 53; 
asks Rousseau's advice concerning 
music, 54 ; as Ossian, 55 ; his near- 
duel with a French oflScer, 55, 56 ; 
tries to pump Rousseau as to his 
views on duelling, 56, 57 ; his ap- 
parent simpUcity, 56, 57, 167; 
tries to approach Rousseau 
through Mile. Le Vasseur, 67, 58 ; 
obtains an interview with Vol- 
taire at Ferney, 58-60 ; dreams of 
reconciling Voltaire and Rousseau, 

60, but succeeds in increasing the 
Ul-feeling between them by a 
"ludicrous print," 60, 61; his 
note-books of their conversation 
not extant, 61; Walpole quoted 
on. 62, 63. 

Goes to Turin to meet Wilkes, 

61, 73 ; had little in common with 
Wilkes, 69; Wilkes's attraction 
for him, 69, 70 ; his method of ap- 
proach, 70, 76, 77 ; their early as- 
sociation, 70, interrupted by his 
Eiu"opean totir, 71 ; significance of 
his first letter to Wilkes, 73, 74; 
on the death of Churchill, 76, 77 ; 
writes Wilkes in Latin, 77; in 
Naples with Wilkes, 79 ; his con- 
quest of the great man, 80; his 
correspondence with Wilkes, 80, 
82; plans an "heroic epistle" to 
Wilkes, 81, 82; their association 
interrupted by the tour to Cor- 
sica, 82, 83; and Lord Mayor 
Wilkes, 83, 85; at the Mansion 



INDEX 



259 



House, 83, 84 ; brings Wilkes and 
Johnson together, 85 ff. ; fails to 
entice Johnson to Wilkes's house, 
86, 87 ; his later relations with 
Wilkes, 88, 89 ; the cabinet at Au- 
chinleck and its treasures, 89, 90, 
192 ; what might have been, 90. 

Reason for his preference for the 
society of older men, 92, 93, 94 ; 
familiar conception of, as a hero- 
worshipper, erroneous, 93; why 
he teased Johnson about the free- 
dom of the will, 93, 94; always 
seeking advice, 94, 95 ; what he 
gave in return, 95 ; his attitude 
defined, 95, 96 ; his filial affection 
gradually extinguished, 96, 97 ; 
but his imagination fascinated by 
his father, 07, 98; his love of a 
good story inherited, 98; his 
father's opinion of his associates, 
98; relations with Sir A. Dick. 
98 Jf. ; his Italian tour, 100, 101 ;, 
his visit to Herculaneum, Naples 
and Rome described in letter to 
Dick, 101-103; was his enthusi- 
asm sincere? 103; travels with 
Lord Mountstuart, 103; proves 
John Dick's title to baronetcy, 
104-106; proposes to "Boswell- 
ise" Sir A. Dick, 106-108, 252; 
relations with Paoli, 108^.; his 
sympathy with America, Ireland, 
and the Scottish Highlands, 109 ; 
becomes interested in the Corsi- 
cans, 110; his first meeting with 
Paoli described by both, 110, 111 ; 
Sir G. O. Trevelyan quoted on the 
Tour to Corsica, 112; solicits 
articles on Corsica from friends, 
113 ; publishes British Essays in 
Favour of the Brave Corsicans, 113 ; 
H. Walpole quoted on Paoli and, 
113 ; his account of Paoli's recep- 
tion in England, 114, 115; Paoli's 
bouse his headquarters in London, 



115 ; his enduring friendship with 
Paoli, 115, 116. 

Sir W. Temple his constant con- 
fidant, 119-121 ; his dreams of 
greatness, 120, 121 ; his concep- 
tion of a worthy mistress of Au- 
chinleck, 121 ; his passion for Miss 

W 1, 121-123; his relations 

with Mile, de Zuylen (Z61ide), 
126-136 ; his extraordinary letter 
to her, 128jf. ; his "preposterous 
humour," 132; Zelide decides not 
to marry him, 135 ; their corres- 
pondence continued, 135, 142, 
143 ; submits her letters to Rous- 
seau, 135 ; were they suited to 
each other ? 135, 136 ; the Italian 
Signora at Siena, 136, 142, 143 ; 
the problem of his relations with 
the sex laid before Paoli, 137; 
woos Kate Blair, "the Princess," 
138 J^. ; his instructions to Temple 
on his visit of inspection, 139-141 ; 
in the emotional rapids, 142; 
his intrigue with the "Moffat 
woman," 144, 145 ; effect of his 
other affairs on his relations with 
Miss Blair, 145 ; his rivals, 146 ; 
describes to Temple an interview 
with Miss Blair, 147-149, 150; 
conspires with FuUarton, 151, 
152; is finally rejected by Miss 
Blair, 152, 153 ; success of his 
Account of Corsica, 153, 154, 157 ; 
Z61ide proposes to translate it into 
French, 154 ; recurs to his idea of 
marrying her, 154 ; but is disen- 
chanted, and welcomes Jiis father's 
refusal to entertain the idea, 155, 
156 ; smitten with la belle Irland- 
aise, 156, 157; writes of her to 
Temple and Sir A. Dick, 157, 158 : 
has a relapse in favour of Miss 
Blair, 159 ; visits Ireland, 159, 160 ; 
how to approach the Lord Lieu- 
tenant, 160; la belle Irlandaise 
again in the ascendant, 161; 



260 



INDEX 



marries Margaret Montgomery, 
161, 162; his relations with his 
wife, 162, 163; "Uxoriana," his 
vain attempt to "Boswellise" her, 
163, 164. 

A disciple of the "philosophy of 
exposure," 166; a lover of "fric- 
tion," 166/.; and Mrs. Rudd. 
166, 167; his affectation of igno- 
rance or prejudice, 167 ; his skill 
in starting or directing the flow of 
talk, illustrated from the Life of 
Johnson, 169, 170; eternally ask- 
ing questions, 169; his skill in 
playing upon men, 170, 171 ; 
character of the conversations he 
records, 171, 172 ; character of his 
letters, 172; his letter to Gold- 
smith on She Stoops to Conquer, 
173, 178, 179 ; his genius analyzed, 
180 jf. ; his "romantic imagina- 
tion," 180-182; his unfulfilled 
scheme of "going up the Baltic" 
with Johnson, 182; his every 
achievement, in the beginning a 
crack-brained dream, 183, 184 ; 
his delight in the realization of his 
dreams, 184, 185 ; his social success 
due to his perpetual good humour, 
185 ff. ; his election to the Literary 
Club due to it, 186; Fanny Bur- 
ney quoted on, 187-189; tries 
vainly to enlist her assistance in 
gathering material for the Life, 
188; character of his gaiety, 189, 
190 ; his abiding habit of recording 
social life, 190. 

His note-books lost, 192; his 
testamentary provision for publi- 
cation of material in the cabinet at 
Auchinleck nullified by his ex- 
ecutors' neglect, 192, 193; his 
MSS. mostly destroyed by the 
family, 193; the Commonplace 
Book and one journal alone pre- 
served, 193 ; contents of the latter, 
194, 195 ; parallel passages of the 



journal and the Life, 195, 197- 
201 ; how did he make his note- 
books.^ 201/.; accuracy of his 
record due to the training of his 
memory, 204-206 ; the journey to 
the Hebrides^with Johnson, 206/. ; 
his fears that Johnson wo'uld not 
write a description of the tour, 
and his consequent "goading," 
208, 209 ; his selfish motive, 210 ; 
not satisfied with Johnson's book, 
210, 211 ; his "Remarks" thereon, 
211 ; plans to publish a supple- 
ment, but abandons the idea, 212 ; 
his own Journal of a Tour, etc., 
published after Johnson's death, 
212/. ; the book a standard of 
indiscretion, 214 ; how it was re- 
ceived by his enemies and friends, 
214-217 ; his answer to his critics, 

217, 218; the happiest of books, 

218, 219. 

His general notions in writing 
the Life of Johnson, 221 ; his pre- 
vailing fault, 221 ; modest in spite 
of himself, 221, 222 ; fails to real- 
ize the extent of his achievement, 
224 ; how his genius exhibited it- 
self. 225, 226 ; effect of the publi- 
cation of the Life, 225 ; describes 
the labour involved, 227 ; the 
thoroughness of the work a proof 
of its greatness, 227 ; his prepara- 
tions for writing it, and his method, 
228; relations with Lord Lons- 
dale, 228, 229; troubles about 
printing, 229; and Malone, 
229, 230 ; extant proof-sheets de- 
scribed, 230, 231 ; character of his 
changes and corrections on proofs, 
232, 233, 236, 237 ; will his own 
copy of the Life ever turn up ? 238. 

His latter years not a pleasant 
study, 239; his father's death 
enables him to transfer his resi- 
dence to London, 240; his in- 
herited estate embarrassed by his 



INDEX 



261 



debts, 240, 241 ; called to the Eng- 
lish bar, but has no briefs, 241, 
242; his Scottish practice sacri- 
ficed to the charms of London, 
242 ; his ambition to enter Parlia- 
ment, and his subserviency to 
Lonsdale, 243; as Master of Au- 
chinleck, a just and generous land- 
lord, 243^. ; plans to visit the 
allied armies in France (1793), 
247 ; beaten and robbed in London, 
^247, 248; his intemperance, 249, 
250; his gaiety of disposition 
never deserted him, 250; and 
Warren Hastings, 250 ; his death, 
250, 251 ; revision of the Life, 251 ; 
his reputation well-nigh sub- 
merged by Johnson's, 251 ; his 
present status in the regard of the 
public, 252; his unexecuted lit- 
erary projects, 252, 253; plans, 
with Johnson's encouragement, a 
history of the invasion of the Pre- 
tender (1745), 253, 254 ; his essen- 
tial amiability, 254, 255. 

Letters (quoted entire or in 
part) : to David Boswell, 10 ; Sir D. 
Dalrymple, 17, 31, 70, 71, 92 ; Sir 
A. Dick, 100, 101, 105, 106, 107, 
113, 158, 160, 161 ; Andrew Gibb, 
244, 246 ; C. Giffardier, 35 ; Sam- 
uel Johnson, 184 ; John Johnston, 
20-22; Warren Hastings, 250; 
Sir M. le Fleming, 248; Andrew 
Mitchell, 46, 47; Bishop Percy, 
222; Jean Jacques Rousseau, 50- 
52, 54, 55, 58, 59, 134 ; Sir WUliam 
Scott, 226; Anna Seward, 223; 
Rev. W. Temple, 12, 18, 121, 140, 
144, 147, 150, 152, 154, 155, 156, 
157, 212, 223, 227, 242; Henry 
Thrale, 208; John Wilkes, 74, 76, 
78, 85, 87, 89, 171; Isabella de 
Zuylen, 45, 128 jf. 

Works. — "Account of Corsica" 
(Tour to Corsica), H. Walpole on, 
63; Sir G. O. Trevelyan on. 111 ; 



success of, 153, 157; quoted or 
referred to, 17, 60, 93, 109, 110, 
202, 206. "British Essays in 
Favour of the Brave Corsicans," 
113. Commonplace Book, de- 
scribed, 193, 194 ; quoted or re- 
ferred to, 27, 32, 33, 34, 38, 39, 41, 
44, 98, 171, 182, 205, 206. "The 
Cub at Newmarket," 5. "Jour- 
nal of a Tour to the Hebrides with 
Samuel Johnson, LL.D.",30, 212- 
219, 238. "Life of Johnson," 
considered at length, 220-238; 
Macaulay's summary of, 222; 
second edition, 248 ; third edition 
far advanced when B. died, 251 ; 
quoted or referred to, 31, 32, 85, 
88, 90, 114, 169, 170, 180, 182, 188, 
190, 193, 194/., 202, 204, 205, 
253, 254. "Memoirs of Paoh"; 
see "Accoimt of Corsica." "Ode 
to Tragedy," 1, 3. "Tour to 
Corsica"; see "Accoimt of Cor- 
sica." 

Boswell, Margaret (Montgomery), 
B.'s wife, trials of her married life, 
162, 163; fails to understand B., 
163; his vain attempt to "Bos- 
wellise" her, 163; her death, 228. 
And see Montgomery, Margaret. 

Boswell, Robert, 193. 

Boswell, Thomas, ancestor of B., 7. 

Boswell family, the, and B.'s MSS., 
193 ; refuses assistance to scholars 
seeking information, 238. 

"Boyd, Aunt," 159. 

British Museum, letters of Wilkes 
in, 74. 

Brown, J. T. T., quoted, on B. as an 
advocate, 29. 

Brown, Rev. William, at Utrecht, 34. 

Bruce, James, 140. 

Bruce, Robert,B. descended from, 67. 

Brunswick, Princess of, 45. 

Burke, Edmund, 89, 205 and n. 

Burney, Frances. See Arblay, Ma- 
dame d'. 



INDEX 



Burns, Robert, 24. 

Bute, Earl of, 66, 81, 103, 104. 

Byron, Lord, 181. 

Caibnie, Mb., 22, 24. 

Catherine II, Empress of Russia, 
183. 

Charles I, 104. 

Charles (B.'s "boy"), 22, 24, 25. 

Charlotte, Queen of George III, 34, 
115, 187. 

Churchill, Charles, and Wilkes, 72 ; 
death of, 73, 76. 

Collings, Samuel, 215. 

Colman, George, 83. 

Conversation, " the purest joy in 
life," to B., 40, 41, 42. 

Cook, Captain James, 181. 

Corradini, Gertrude, Wilkes's mis- 
tress, 72, 73, 89. 

Corsica, B.'s visit to, 110_^. And 
see Paoli. 

Corsicans, B.'s interest in, 109. 

Dalrymple, Sib David, suggests 
Utrecht for completion of B.'s 
legal studies, 30; mentioned, 14, 
15, 17, 18, 46, 98. And see Letters, 
imder Boswell, James. 

De Leyre, Signor, 54. 

DefiFand, Marquise du, on Hume, 13 ; 
on B., 17. 

Defoe, Daniel, Moll Flanders, 24. 

Dempster, George, 152. 

Derrick, Samuel, 4. 

Dick, Sir Alex., position and char- 
acter of, 98^.; interested in B.'s 
Italian trip, 100 ; introduces B. to 
Paderni, 101 ; B. plans a biog- 
raphy of, 104, 107, 108, 252 ; and 
John Dick's claim to baronetcy, 
104-106; his diary quoted, 107; 
mentioned, 92, 103, 158. 159, 160, 
161, 162. And see Letters, imder 
Boswell, James. 

Dick, Lady (Alexander), 158. 

Dick, Jessy, 108. 



Dick, (Sir) John, B. establishes his 

claim to baronetcy, 104-106. 
Dick, Lady (John), 105, 106. 
Dick, Sir William, 104, 105, 106. 
Dilly, Charles, Johnson and Wilkes 

dine with, 85 ; mentioned, 86, 87, 

88. 
Dilly, John, 86, 87. 
Dumas, Alexandre, Monte Cristo, 

73. 
Dimdonald, Earl of, 7. 

Edinburgh University, B. a stu- 
dent at, 9, 14, 28, 29. 

Emetulla, Lord Keith's adopted 
daughter, 43, 45. 

Errol, Lord, 214. 

Erskine, Euphemia. See Boswell, 
Mrs. Euphemia. 

Essex, Earl of, 39, 40. 

Fernet, B.'s interview with Vol- 
taire at, 58-60. 

Fielding, Henry, 149. 

Fletcher, Andrew, of Saltoun, 52. 

Forbes, Sir WiUiam, one of B.'s lit- 
erary executors, 192, 193, 217. 

Forbes, Lady, Curiosities of a Scots 
Charta Chest, 99 and n. 

Franklin, Benjamin, 99. 

Franklin, William, 99. 

Frederick the Great, and Lord Keith, 
42, 43, 45. 

Frederick William II, 45. 

French Revolution, echo of, 246. 

Fullarton, Mr., "the Nabob," and 
Miss Blair, 142, 146, 151, 152, 153. 

Gabbick, David, 89, 171, 178, 179, 

209, 237. 
Gentleman, Francis, 3, 4. 
Geoffrin, Madame, on Hume, 13. 
George II, 42. 
George III, 11, 64, 66, 67, 68, 106, 

113, 115, 187. 
Gerard, Alexander, 169. 
Gibb, Andrew, 243, 244, 246, 247, 249. 



INDEX 



263 



Gibb, James, 243, 

GifFardier, Rev. Charles (Mr. Tur- 
bulent), 34, 35, 187, 188 ; letter of 
B. to, 35. 

Gilmour, Sir Alex. ("Sir Sawney"), 
and Miss Blair, 150, 152, 159. 

Glasgow University, B. a student at, 
14, 29. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, no letter-writer, 
173; letter of B. to, on She 
Stoops to Conquer, 173J^. ; can- 
celled reference to, on proof-sheets 
of Life, 232, 233. 

Gordon, Hon. Charles, 39. 

Gordon, Duchess of. See Maxwell, 
Jenny. 

Gray, Thomas, letter of H. Walpole 
to, 62, 63. 

Grenville, George, 66, 67. 

Gronovius, Abraham, 30, 38. 

Hackman, Rev. James, 166. 

Hague, The, 37, 38. 

Hailes, Lord. See Dalrymple, Sir 
David. 

Halifax, Lord, 67. 

Hamilton, Duchess of, 215. 

Hastings, Warren, B.'s last extant 
letter written to, 250. 

Hawkins, Sir John, Life of Johnson, 
223. 

Hector, Edmund, 194, 236. 

Herculaneum, 39, 101, 102. 

Hervey, Thomas, 194. 

Hill, George Birkbeck, his edition of 
the Life, 197 n. ; Johnsonian Mis' 
cdlanies, iil; mentioned, 231, 
236. 

Hogarth, William, 64, 90, 91. 

Holland, Lord, 112. 

Horace, Epistles, 9. 

Hume, David, B.'s first meeting 
with, 11, 12 ; his History of Eng- 
land and Natural History of Re- 
ligion, 11 ; B.'s judgment of, 12, 
13 n., confirmed by Mmes. du 
Deffand and Geoffrin, 13 ; in B.'s 



"ludicrous print," 60, 61 ; men- 
tioned, 58, 89, 99, 252. 

Ireland, B.'s visit to, 159-161. 
ItaUan Signora, the, 136, 142, 143. 

James IV, of Scotland, 7. 

Johnson, Samuel, his social status 
compared with B.'s, 6 ; quoted, on 
Auchinleck castle, 8, 9 ; B.'s rela- 
tions with, a vindication of his 
ambition to associate with the 
great, 14 ; accompanies B. to 
Harwich, en route to Holland, 31, 
32; his advice to B. on places to 
visit, 39, 40 ; quoted, on Rousseau 
and Wilkes, 83; and Wilkes, 
brought together by B., 85; B. 
fails to induce him to dine at 
Wilkes's house. 86, 87, 88; B.'s 
record of his conversation, 169, 
170, 195, 197-201 ; visits Hebrides 
with B., 206/. ; B. urges him to 
write a narrative of the tour, 208- 
210 ; his narrative not satisfactory 
to B., 210; B.'s "Remarks" 
thereon, 211, 212; his fame as a 
writer of travels eclipsed by B.'s 
Journal of the tour, published 
after J.'s death, 213, 214; his 
friends outraged by B.'s book, 214, 
215, 216, 217 ; his Dictionary, 233 ; 
mentioned, 32, 37, 70, 89, 92, 93, 
94, 126, 144, 163, 166, 167, 180, 
181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186. 187, 
189, 190, 194. 195, 201, 202, 203, 
204. 205 and n., 219, 220/., 240, 
251, 253, 254. And see Works, 
imder Boswell, James, for refer- 
ences to the Life of Johnson, and 
Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. 

Johnson Club Papers, 231. 

Johnston, John, of Grange, a dear 
friend of B., 19; letter of B. to, 
20-22. 

Kames, Lord, 146. 



264 



INDEX 



Keats, John, 180. 

Keith, George, Earl Marischal, his 
career, 42; friend of Voltaire and 
Rousseau, and favourite of Fred- 
erick the Great, 42, 43; intimate 
with Lord Auchinkck, 42, 43; 
invites B. to travel to Berlin with 
him, 43 ; the journey, 43, 44, 45 ; 
B. proposes to write a character 
sketch of, 44, 53 ; quoted on B., 
44; declines to introduce B. to 
Rousseau, 49, 50, but probably 
gave him a letter to Voltaire, 58 ; 
mentioned, 45, 109. 

Keith, Gen. James F. E., 43. 

Kincardine, Alexander, Earl of, 7. 

Kincardine, Coxmtess of, 30. 

Langton, Bennet, 15, 189, 194, 210. 
Le Fleming, Sir Michael, letter of 

B. to, 248, 249. 
Le Vasseur, Therese, 58. 
Leyden, 30, 38, 39. 
Literary Club, the, B.'s election to, 

due to his good humour, 186. 
London, Bishop of, 99. 
London, B.'s longing for, 9; his first 

impressions of, 10; Wilkes Lord 

Mayor of, 83-85; effect of B.'s 

passion for, after his father's 

death, 240-242. 
Lonsdale, Lord, B.'s "master," 228, 

229, 243. 
Love, James, 22, 122, 123. 

McDonald, Sir Alex., 215. 

Macaulay (McAuley), Rev. Ken- 
neth, 215. 

Macaulay, Thomas B., Lord, his 
summary of the Life, 221, 222. 

Macdonald, Flora, 254. 

Malone, Edmond, one of B.'s lit- 
erary executors, 192, 193 ; B.'s 
chief assistant in printing the Life, 
229 /. ; his work on the proofs, 
236, 237. 

Mar, Earl of, 7, 43. 



Mary Anne {la belle Irlandaise), B.'s 
wooing of, 156 jf. ; her relatives 
approve of B., 157 ; visited by B. 
in Ireland, 159, 161. 

Mason, William, Uves of Gray and 
of Whitehead, 223 ; mentioned, 1. 

Maty, Matthew, 233. 

Maxwell, Jenny, Duchess of Gordon, 
146, 147. 

Mitchell, Andrew, B.'s letters to, 
and their purpose, 46, 47; his 
advice to B., 47 ; mentioned, 94. 

"Moffat woman, the," B.'s intrigue 
with, 144, 145. 

Monboddo, Lord, 214, 215. 

Montgomery, Margaret, marries B., 
161 ; her character, 161, 162 ; men- 
tioned, 156. And see Boswell, 
Margaret (Montgomery). 

Montgomery (?), Mary Anne. See 
Mary Anne. 

Mountstuart, Lord, B.'s travelling 
companion in Italy, 103 and n. 

Nairne, William, 37, 38. 
Naples, B. and Wilkes at, 78-80. 
Nash, Richard (."Beau"), 4. 
Nassau, Count of, 30. 
Nassau Beverwerd, Comtesse de, 36. 
North-Briton, The. See Wilkes, John. 

"Old Pretender." See Stuart, 

James F. E. 
Orkney, Lady, 250. 

Paderni, Camtllo, 101, 102. 

Paine, Thomas, 64. 

Paoli, Pasquale, difference between 
B.'s friendship for, and his other 
friendships, 108, 109; a modern 
/Eneas, 109; B.'s first meeting 
with, described by both, 110, 111; 
quoted, 112; personality of, first 
revealed to the world in B.'s Ac- 
count of Corsica, 113; his recep- 
tion in England, 113, 115; later 
relations with B. described in the 



INDEX 



265 



Life, 115 ; their friendship never 
broken, 115; his house, B.'s head- 
quarters in London, 115 ; con- 
sulted by B. as to his relations with 
the sex, 137; mentioned, 41, 89, 
92, 94, 103, 153, 160, 167, 172, 185, 
186, 203. 206. 

Paoh, Penn., 109. 

Parliament, B.'s vain attempts to 
enter, 243. 

Paul, Saint, 46. 

Pepys, Samuel, his naivete and B.'s, 
15. 

Percy, Thomas, 194, 215, 222, 228. 

Perreau brothers, 166. 

Pitt, William, Earl Chatham, 42, 
160. 

Pope, Alexander, 99. 

Porter, Lucy, 194. 

Porteus, Beilby, 184, 185. 

Prestonfield, 98, 99, 100. 

Pringle, Sir John, 154. 

Ramsat, Allan, 99. 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 88, 214, 236. 

Rivarola, Count, 110. 

Rogers, Rev. Samuel, quoted, on the 
neglect of duty of B.'s executors, 
193. 

Roman Catholics, B. associates m ith, 
166. 

Romantic Movement, the, B. a child 
of, 181. 

Rome, B. on the antiquities of, 102 ; 
mentioned, 39. 

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, his naivete 
and B.'s, 15; B.'s method of ap- 
proach to, 49, 50 ; his La Nouvelle 
Heldise, 52, 67 ; B.'s interview with, 
53, 54 ; B. asks advice of, concern- 
ing music, 54, 55, and tries to 
"draw" him as to duelling, 55-57 ; 
B. describes to him his interview 
with Voltaire, 59, 60; B.'s "ludi- 
crous print" increases the ill- 
feeling between Voltaire and, 60, 
61 ; B. submits Zelide's letters to. 



134 ; mentioned, 42, 44, 48, 63, 83, 

89, 101, 141, 166, 180. 
Rowlandson, Thomas, 215. 
Rudd, Mrs. Margaret C, B. and, 

166, 167. 
Ruddiman, Thomas, 252. 

Sally, B.'s daughter by the "Mof- 
fat woman," 145. 

Scotland, Johnson'sdishkeof,207,208. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 254. 

Scott, Sir William, 225, 226. 

Selfe, Mr., corrector of the press, 237. 

Seward, Anna, the "Swan of Lich- 
field," 223, 224, 228. 

Shakespeare, William, Othello, 146. 

Sheridan, Richard B., 171. 

Sheridan, Thomas, 1, 

Sibbald, Sir Robert, 144. 

Smollett, Tobias G., 66. 

Sommeldyck, the noble house of, 30. 

Southerne, Thomas, Oroonoco, 4. 

Stewart, Andrew, 37, 38. 

Stuart, Charles Edward L. P. C, the 
"Yoimg Pretender," 65; B. plans 
to write a history of his invasion, 
253, 254. 

Stuart, James F. E., the "Old Pre- 
tender," 44. 

Stuart, Col. James, 184. 

Tamar, ballet, 61, 62. 

Taylor, Dr. John, 195. 

Temple, Rev. William, B.'s lifelong 
friend, 11, 119, 120; sent on a 
visit of inspection of Miss Blair, 
with instructions, 139-141 ; dis- 
approves B.'s propensity to in- 
trigue, 141, 142; disapproves of 
Zelide as a wife for B., 154; one 
of B.'s literary executors, 192, 193; 
mentioned, 138, 144, 145, 147, 150, 
155, 156, 157, 181, 212, 223, 227, 
241, 242. And see Letters, under 
Boswell, James. 

Thrale, Henry, letter of B. to, 208 ; 
mentioned. 111. 



266 



INDEX 



Thrale, Hester Lynch, Anecdotes of 
Johnson, 203, 223 ; Letters of Sam- 
uel Johnson, 223 ; mentioned. 111, 
144, 204, 208. 

Thurlow, Lord, 37. 

Towers, J., Last Words of Samuel 
Johnson, 223. 

Trevelyan, Sir G. O., quoted, on 
B.'s Account of Corsica, 112; men- 
tioned, 215. 

TroUope, Anthony, 149. 

Trotz, Mynheer, B.'s teacher at 
Utrecht, 32; did B. try to "Bos- 
wellise" him? 33. 

"Turbulent, Mr." See Giffardier. 

Tyers, Thomas, Life of Johnson, 223. 

Ulubice, and Auchinleck, 9, 10. 

Unwin, Fisher, 231. 

Utrecht, chosen as place for B. to 
prosecute his legal studies, 21, 23, 
29, 30, 31 ; his early days at, 32/. 

Vesuvius, Mt., 79. 

Voltaire, F. M. Arouet, B. visits at 
Ferney, 68-60, and describes his 
interview to Rousseau, 59; his 
opinion of Rousseau, 60; B.'s 
"ludicrous print" of, with Rous- 
seau and Himie, 60, 61 ; men- 
tioned, 42, 141, 166. 

W T, Miss, an unidentified flame 

of B., 120-122. 

Walpole, Horace, letter of, to Gray, 
62, 63; on B. and Rousseau, 63; 
on PaoH, 113 ; mentioned, 17, 112, 
178. 

Warren. Dr. Richard, 250. 

Warton, Thomas, 236. 

Wedderburn, Alexander, 232, 233. 

Wilkes, John, an. exile, in Turin, 61 ; 
his career, his' character and repu- 
tation,64/'. ;with the North-Briton, 
forces Bute to resign, 66; North- 
Briton,- No. Jt5, 67, 71, 72 ; prose- 
cuted by general warrant, 67, 68 ; 
imprisoned and discharged, 68; 



the idol of the crowd, 68; his 
gaiety appeals to B, 69, 70 ; their 
early acquaintance, 70; expelled 
from Parhament and outlawed, 

71, 72; and Gertrude Corradini, 

72, 73 ; efiFect of Churchill's death 
on, 73, 76 ; with B. in Italy, 73/. ; 
nature of their relations, 80, 81; 
B. projects heroic epistle to, 81, 
82; Lord Mayor of London, 83- 
85 ; B. brings Johnson and Viim 
together, 85, 86 ; Johnson declines 
to dine at his house, 87, 88; B.'a 
later relations with, 89 ; what B. 
might have written about him, 90, 
91 ; mentioned, 10, 40, 92, 95, 101, 
103, 104, 163, 170. 184. And tee 
Letters under Boswell, James. 

Wilkes, Miss, 79, 85, 86, 87, 88. 

Williams, Anna, 209. 

Wooing a wife, reflections on, 117- 

119. 
Wordsworth, William, his French 

daughter, 25. 



York, Duke of, 5. 
"Yoimg Pretender." See 
Charles Edward. 



Stuart, 



"Zelide." See Zuylen, Isabella de. 

Zuylen, Baron de, 33. 123, 127, 129. 

Zuylen, Isabella de, letter of B. to, 
45 ; B. consults Rousseau con- 
cerning his love for, 53, 134 ; B.'s 
love-affair with, 123/. ; her char- 
acter, 124, and her own critical 
analysis thereof, 124-126; nature 
of her sentiment and B.'s each for 
the other, 126/.; extracts from 
B.'s only extant love-letter, 128 
/. ; the end of it all, 134-136 ; her 
correspondence with B. continued, 
142, 143 ; B. renews his suit to, 
153, 154 ; proposes to translate 
the Account of Corsica into French, 
154; end of B.'s relations with, 
155, 156 ; mentioned, 149, 164, 167, 
169. 



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